Incubator escapee wiki

Meera Syal

Article Discussion
Revision as of 00:14, 28 May 2025 by imported>Jean-de-Nivelle (Quick cleanup per WP:NOPIPE)
(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person

Meera Syal Template:Post-nominals FRSL (born Feroza Syal; 27 June 1961) is an English comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist and actress. She rose to prominence as one of the team that created Goodness Gracious Me and by portraying Sanjeev's grandmother, Ummi, in The Kumars at No. 42. She has become one of the UK's best-known Asian personalities.

She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1997 New Year Honours and in 2003 was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.<ref name="roehampton1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to drama and literature.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref><ref>2015 New Year Honours List Template:Webarchive</ref>

In 2023, she was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship.<ref name="Hall"/>

Early lifeEdit

Syal was born on 27 June 1961 in Wolverhampton and grew up in Essington, Staffordshire, a mining village a few miles to the north. Her Indian Punjabi parents, Surinder Syal (father) and Surinder Kaur (mother), came to the United Kingdom from New Delhi.<ref>Meera Syal Template:Webarchive, Who Do You Think You Are?, BBC</ref> When she was young, the family moved to Bloxwich, north of Walsall.

This landscape, and the family's status as the only Asian family in the small Midlands mining village of Essington, were later to form the backdrop to her novel (later filmed) Anita and Me, which Syal described in a 2003 BBC interview as semi-autobiographical.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She attended Queen Mary's High School in nearby Walsall and then studied English and Drama at Manchester University, graduating with a Double First.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="independent1">Template:Cite news</ref>

Acting and writing careerEdit

In 2023, she was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship, its highest accolade, for her career on screen. During her studies in Manchester, Syal joined the Stephen Joseph Studio, acting and later writing stage plays. On graduation, she had secured a place to study for an MA in drama and psychotherapy at the University of Leeds, and then to study for a PGCE to teach. However, she had also co-written the one-woman play One of Us with Jackie Shapiro, in which Syal performed all fifteen parts, about a West Midlands-born ethnic Indian girl who ran away from home to become an actress. First performed at the Stephen Joseph Studio, she then performed it at the National Student Drama Festival where it won a prize to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival, where it also won a prize. As a result, a director from the Royal Court Theatre contacted Syal, and asked her to perform in a play at the Royal Court on a three-year contract.<ref>Interview with Meera Syal, The Two Shot Podcast, 28 May 2018</ref>

Syal wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film Bhaji on the Beach, directed by Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham fame. In 1996 she played Miss Chauhan, a high school football coach in the film Beautiful Thing. She was on the team that wrote and performed in the BBC comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me (1996–2001), originally on radio and then on television.<ref name="independent1" /> She was a scriptwriter on A.R. Rahman and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and she played the grandmother Sushila in the International Emmy-award-winning series The Kumars at No. 42, which ran for seven series,<ref name="autogenerated1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> reviving the character in 2021 for BBC Radio 4's Gossip and Goddesses with Granny Kumar.

In October 2008, she starred in the BBC Two sitcom Beautiful People. This role, as Aunty Hayley, continued in 2009.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Syal starred in the eleventh series of Holby City as consultant Tara Sodi.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2009, she guest starred in Minder and starred in the film Mad, Sad & Bad.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2010, she played Shirley Valentine in a one-woman show at the Menier Chocolate Factory, later transferring to Trafalgar Studios.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the same year she played Nasreen Chaudhry in two episodes of Doctor Who alongside Matt Smith.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Syal's memoir is due to be published in 2025.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Other notable appearancesEdit

Syal is an occasional singer, having 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She earlier (1988) provided vocals for a bhangra version of "Then He Kissed Me", composed by Biddu and with the Pakistani pop star Nazia Hassan, as part of the short-lived girl band Saffron.<ref name="independent1" /> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Having studied English at university and penned two novels and a variety of scripts and screenplays, Syal was chosen as one of the guests on "The Cultural Exchange" slot of Front Row on 30 April 2013, when she nominated To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee as a piece of art work which she loved.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

As a journalist, she writes occasionally for The Guardian.<ref name="britishcouncil1" />

Awards and recognitionEdit

Syal won the National Student Drama Award for performing in One of Us which was written by Jacqueline Shapiro while at university.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name="britishcouncil1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was given the Nazia Hassan Foundation award in 2003.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2011–12, Syal was appointed visiting professor of contemporary theatre at St Catherine's College, Oxford.<ref name="independent1" /> She has an honorary degree from SOAS, University of London and from the University of Roehampton.<ref name="roehampton1" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

She received her CBE insignia from the Prince of Wales on 6 May 2015 at Buckingham Palace.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2017, Syal was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<ref>Natasha Onwuemezi, "Rankin, McDermid and Levy named new RSL fellows" Template:Webarchive, The Bookseller, 7 June 2017.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In May 2023, she received the BAFTA Fellowship, regarded as the highest accolade of the British Academy Television Awards.<ref name="Hall">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":0" />

Personal lifeEdit

Syal married journalist Shekhar Bhatia in 1989; they divorced in 2002. Their daughter, Milli Bhatia, is associate director of the Royal Court Theatre.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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 register office, Staffordshire.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> They have a son, born in 2005.

In 2004, Syal took part in one episode of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, which investigated her family history.<ref name="wdytya MS">Template:Cite episode</ref> Syal discovered that both her grandfathers were supporters of the Indian independence movement: one as a communist journalist, the other as a Punjab protester who was briefly imprisoned in the Golden Temple.<ref name="wdytya MS" />

Syal's brother is investigative journalist Rajeev Syal, who covers Whitehall, writing stories for The Guardian.<ref name="Nick McGrath">Template:Cite news</ref>

In February 2009, Syal was one of a number of British entertainers who signed an open letter printed in The Times protesting against the persecution of Baháʼís in Iran.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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

Writing creditsEdit

Template:Div col

ScreenplaysEdit

StageEdit

  • One of Us (1983)
  • The Oppressed Minorities Big Fun Show (1992)
  • Goodness Gracious Me (1999)
  • Bombay Dreams (2002)

TelevisionEdit

RadioEdit

NovelsEdit

  • 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
  • The House of Hidden Mothers (2015)

Template:Div col end

Acting creditsEdit

Template:Div col

StageEdit

RadioEdit

  • True Believers (1990)
  • The World As We Know It (1999)
  • Double Income, No Kids Yet (2001)
  • A Small Town Murder (2008–2020)
  • Bindi Business (2017)
  • Gossip and Goddesses with Granny Kumar (2021)
  • "Mrs Sidhu Investigates"

Film and TVEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Div col end

Academic receptionEdit

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.

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

External linksEdit

 | name/{{#if:{{#invoke:ustring|match|1=0842935|2=^nm}}
   | Template:Trim/
   | nm0842935/
   }}
 | {{#if: {{#property:P345}}
   | name/Template:First word/
   | find?q=%7B%7B%23if%3A+%0A++++++%7C+%7B%7B%7Bname%7D%7D%7D%0A++++++%7C+%5B%5B%3ATemplate%3APAGENAMEBASE%5D%5D%0A++++++%7D%7D&s=nm
   }}
 }}{{#if: 0842935  {{#property:P345}} | {{#switch: 
 | award | awards = awards Awards for | biography | bio = bio Biography for
 }}}} {{#if: 
 | {{{name}}}
 | Template:PAGENAMEBASE
 }}] at IMDb{{#if: 0842935{{#property:P345}}
 | Template:EditAtWikidata
 | Template:Main other

}}{{#switch:{{#invoke:string2|matchAny|^nm.........|^nm.......|nm|.........|source=0842935|plain=false}} 

 | 1 | 3 =  Template:Main otherTemplate:Preview warning
 | 4 = Template:Main otherTemplate:Preview warning

}}{{#invoke:Check for unknown parameters|check|unknown=Template:Main other|preview=Page using Template:IMDb name with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"|showblankpositional=1| 1 | 2 | id | name | section }}

Template:BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://zalansite.site/mediawiki/index.php?title=Meera_Syal&oldid=363129"