Meera Syal

Meera Syal
Meera Syal
Born Feeroza Syal
27 June 1961 (1961-06-27) (age 50)[1]
Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England
Occupation Actress, singer, writer, playwright, comedienne, producer, journalist,
television presenter
Years active 1983–present
Spouse Shekhar Bhatia (m. 1989–2002) «start: (1989)–end+1: (2003)»"Marriage: Shekhar Bhatia to Meera Syal" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meera_Syal)
Sanjeev Bhaskar (m. 2005–present) «start: (2005-01-21)»"Marriage: Sanjeev Bhaskar to Meera Syal" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meera_Syal)

Meera Syal MBE (born Feeroza Syal[2] on 27 June 1961) is a British comedienne, writer, playwright, singer, journalist, producer and actress. She rose to prominence as one of the team that created Goodness Gracious Me and became one of the UK's best-known Indian personalities portraying Sanjeev's grandmother, Ummi, in The Kumars at No. 42.

She was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List of 1997 and in 2003 was listed in The Observer as one of the fifty funniest acts in British comedy.

Contents

Life and career

Her Punjabi-born parents came to England from New Delhi. She was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (now West Midlands) and grew up in Essington, a mining village a few miles to the north. When she was a young girl the family moved to Bloxwich. She attended Queen Mary's High School in nearby Walsall, and then studied English and drama at Manchester University.

Syal wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film Bhaji on the Beach, directed by Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham fame. She was one of the team who wrote and performed in the BBC comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me (1996–2001), originally on radio and then on television.

She achieved a number one record with Gareth Gates and her co-stars from The Kumars at No. 42 with Spirit in the Sky, the Comic Relief single. She also sang Then He Kissed Me (composed by Biddu) with the Pakistani pop star Nazia Hassan. Syal, Hassan, and Bidddu also came up with the girl band named "Saffron" in 1988[citation needed].

In October 2008 she starred in the BBC2 sitcom Beautiful People. This role, as Aunty Hayley, continued in 2009. Syal starred in the eleventh series of Holby City as Consultant Tara Sodi. In 2009, she guest starred in Minder and starred in the film Mad, Sad & Bad. In 2010, she played Shirley Valentine in a one-woman show at the Trafalgar Studios. In the same year she played Nasreen Chroudhry in two episodes of Doctor Who alongside Matt Smith. Her Goodness Gracious Me co-star, Nina Wadia, also appeared earlier in the same series episode "The Eleventh Hour".

Awards and recognition

Syal won the National Student Drama Award for performing in One of Us which was written by Jacqueline Shapiro while at university. She won the Betty Trask Award for her first book Anita and Me and the Media Personality of the Year award at the Commission for Racial Equality's annual Race in the Media awards in 2000.

She was given the Nazia Hassan Foundation award in 2003.

In June 2003 she appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme with a selection of music by Nitin Sawhney, Madan Bala Sindhu, Joni Mitchell, Pizzicato Five, Sukhwinder Singh, Louis Armstrong and others. The luxury she chose to ease her life as a castaway was a piano.[3] As a journalist she writes occasionally for The Guardian.

Personal life

In 2004 she took part in one episode of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, which investigated her family history. One of her parents is Hindu and the other a Sikh and since both share the same cultural heritage the families had no problem at all.[4] Syal was apparently surprised to discover both her grandfathers had campaigned against British rule and presence in India: one was a communist journalist; the other was a Punjab protestor, who was imprisoned and tortured in the Golden Temple.

In January 2005, Syal married her frequent collaborator, Sanjeev Bhaskar, who plays her grandson in The Kumars At No. 42; the marriage ceremony took place in Lichfield, Staffordshire. Their baby, a boy named Shaan, was born at the Portland Hospital on 2 December 2005. Syal has a daughter called Chameli from her former marriage to journalist Shekhar Bhatia. Her brother is investigative journalist Rajeev Syal.

In February 2009, Syal was one of a number of British entertainers who signed an open letter printed in The Times protesting about the persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran.

In January 2011, Syal took part in the BBC Radio 4 programme My Teenage Diary,[5] discussing growing up as the only British Asian girl in a small English town, feeling overweight and unattractive.

Writing credits

Screenplays

Stage

Radio

Television

Novels

  • Anita and Me (1996)
  • Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999), published in German under the title Sari, Jeans und Chilischoten in 2003

Selected filmography

Academic reception

Her book Anita and Me has found its way onto school and university English syllabuses both in Britain and abroad. Scholarly literature on it includes:

  • Rocío G. Davis, "India in Britain: Myths of Childhood in Meera Syal's Anita and Me", in Fernando Galván & Mercedes Bengoechea (ed.), On Writing (and) Race in Contemporary Britain, Universidad de Alcalá 1999, 139-46.
  • Ana Maria Sanchez-Arce "Invisible Cities: Being and Creativity in Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and Ben Okri’s Astonishing the Gods", in Philip Laplace and Éric Tabuteau (eds), Cities on the Margin/ On the Margin of Cities: Representations of Urban Space in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction, Besançon: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2003: 113–30.
  • Graeme Dunphy, "Meena's Mockingbird: From Harper Lee to Meera Syal", in Neophilologus 88, 2004, 637-59.

References

External links


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • Meera Syal — (* 27. Juni 1961 in Essington bei Wolverhampton) ist eine Schriftstellerin, Komikerin, Sängerin, Schauspielerin und Journalistin. Meera Syals Eltern kamen 1960 von Delhi nach England und sprachen ursprünglich Panjabi, während Meera jedoch mit… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Syal — Meera Syal (* 27. Juni 1961 in Essington bei Wolverhampton) ist eine Schriftstellerin, Komikerin, Sängerin, Schauspielerin und Journalistin. Meera Syals Eltern kamen 1960 von Delhi nach England und sprachen ursprünglich Punjabi, während Meera… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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  • Goodness Gracious Me (TV & radio) — Infobox Television show name = Goodness Gracious Me caption = DVD cover format = Sketch comedy runtime = 25 mins creator = Sanjeev Bhaskar Meera Syal Anil Gupta executive producer = Jon Plowman starring = Sanjeev Bhaskar Meera Syal Kulvinder Ghir …   Wikipedia

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  • Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee — is a 1999 novel by Meera Syal that was later adapted into a three part BBC television miniseries in 2005.Film, TV or theatrical adaptationstory OutlineChildhood friends Tania (Laila Rouass), Sunita (Meera Syal) and Chila (Ayesha Dharker) are now… …   Wikipedia

  • Jekyll (TV series) — Infobox Television show name = Jekyll caption = The Jekyll intertitle. runtime = 55 min. (approx.) country = United Kingdom writer = Steven Moffat starring = James Nesbitt Gina Bellman Denis Lawson Michelle Ryan Meera Syal theme music composer =… …   Wikipedia

  • Room 101 (TV series) — Infobox television show name = Room 101 country=United Kingdom caption = The titles of the Nick Hancock episodes of Room 101 . format = Comedy talk show picture format = runtime = 30 Minutes creator = starring = Nick Hancock (1994 1997) Paul… …   Wikipedia

  • The Kumars at No. 42 — Infobox Television show name = The Kumars at No. 42 caption = An episode of The Kumars at No. 42 showing Donny Osmond and Westlife as a guests deletable image caption format = Comedy chat show runtime = 30 minutes creator = Hat Trick Productions… …   Wikipedia

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