Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: Celebrity, The Graham Norton Show
Joe Harker
In a new book Miriam Margolyes has opened up about a regret she had when appearing on The Graham Norton Show alongside Matthew Perry.
Her book Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life goes over some of the most prized moments of the 82-year-old actor's life, including a plethora of interactions with other famous names.
Among her stories are the time she flashed film director Martin Scorsese on set of Age of Innocence because she thought everyone was a bit tired and her encounter with Mick Jagger which led her to call him a 'smug c**t'.
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Also featured in the book is mention of a floating turd in the toilet of Chernobyl actor Jared Harris and her admittance that she slept through the premieres of the Harry Potter films.
Margolyes, famous for not having much of a filter when she gets talking, also touches on some moments she regrets, including the time she swore live on air when speaking about Conservative politician Jeremy Hunt.
She had been appearing on BBC Radio 4 when she passed Hunt as he was leaving the studio and said she told him: "When I saw him there I just said, ‘You’ve got a hell of a job – best of luck,’ but what I really wanted to say was, ‘F**k you, you bastard'."
Margolyes said she'd been 'overcome with horror' for saying it on the radio, though Radio 4's producers helped her feel less ashamed about it as they sent her flowers.
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Elsewhere in the book Margolyes remembered another moment where she wished she could take the words back and that was when she appeared on her 'spiritual home of The Graham Norton Show several years ago.
She'd been on Norton's sofa with Matthew Perry and Gemma Arteton and had the audience in stitches by telling a story about meeting legendary actor Sir Laurence Olivier where she said she 'started to cream in my knickers'.
However, it's another moment from that episode that she regrets, as when the conversation was on Matthew Perry's play The End of Longing he was saying his character was 'a drunk' and discussing with Norton how he put some of himself into the role.
Margolyes recounted in her book that she asked Perry: "Were you an alcoholic at one time?"
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He told her 'I still am' before Norton added 'I don't think you ever stop'.
Perry then said: "No, you always are, you always are a recovering alcoholic. I'm glad we're talking about this."
Margolyes told him she thought 'you look great' but in Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life she wrote that she 'really wish I hadn't' said that.
She found it to be one of the few times she didn't really 'mesh' with another guest on a chat show, and Perry has written about his struggles with alcoholism in his own memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.