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3. She likes shocking people with the things she says

Miriam is known for being very open and candid, and she speaks frankly about sex in the episode. She says she’s comfortable sharing things other people wouldn’t. “I enjoy that moment of danger, I suppose,” she says. “It’s quite thrilling and can become addictive.” But she’s careful to be aware of her audience too. “I think it’s not nice to shock people who can’t take it. You’ve got to know who you’re talking to.”

Miriam Margolyes during lockdown.

4. Miriam has a rule that she won’t do housework

Despite the fact that the ironing has been stacking up in lockdown, she’s leaving it until someone else can come and do it. “I’m lazy to the depths of my being,” Miriam says. “I’m an old lady now, and I have to conserve my energy and I am not going to waste my energy on ironing.” As for the dirty dishes, she admits she was eventually forced to deal with them after three weeks “because things had got out of hand”.

5. She hated being in the Cambridge Footlights at university

“It was an ungenerous, deeply competitive group of people who were not used to having women amongst them,” Miriam says. Off-stage, she recalls, they didn’t speak to her. “I would come off stage to be met with silence and cold stares, and it hurt a lot,” she says. Even now, decades later, she doesn’t like the world of comedy as a result. “I should have got over it… but I haven’t.”

6. Miriam says Charles Dickens has always been the most exciting man in her life

“I discovered him when I was 11, reading Oliver Twist,” she says. “I’ve been enthralled and enslaved by him ever since.” In the 1980s, Miriam was in a solo stage show called Dickens’ Women, in which she played 23 characters from his novels. “It was very successful, and I think it’s still some of the best work I’ve ever done.” After that, she says, people started to recognise her as a serious actor, and it led to film roles and a career in Hollywood.

7. She spent 16 years in America and had “a really very good time”

“Oh, it was wonderful, because I was earning a lot of money and I was being successful,” Miriam says. “In America – in LA, anyway – you have to be successful; they’re terrified of failure.” She acted in movies and TV shows, and even had her own sitcom, Frannie’s Turn. But the show, in which she played a Puerto Rican seamstress, went off air after six episodes. “It was funny, and it got better, but it wasn’t funny enough,” she says.

8. Miriam’s proudest film role was in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence

She won a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA for her role in the film, and says she loved working with director Martin Scorsese. “He was very, very intense. Totally focused on the moment. And when he gave you notes, he would whisper them in your ear away from the others, very discreet in that way.” Although people on set were “quite frightened of him”, Miriam says, “personally I found him absolutely delightful. He couldn’t have been more charming”.

9. She says her life has been “totally scarred” by the Holocaust

Miriam is concerned about anti-Semitism in England, which she describes as “troubling and disgusting”. She also says that as a Jewish person, she thinks about the Holocaust every day. “I did not suffer personally in it, nor did my parents, nor did any close relatives of ours. Nonetheless, the fact of the Holocaust has been a shadow… across my entire life, and I think nearly all Jews would say that. Every time I go in a train, every time I have a shower… I think about those people, and I am torn with horror and rage and pity for them.”