Book Review: Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart
Published: Monday 17th December 2012
As recently as 2009, Miranda Hart was still almost completely unknown to the British public, recognised - if she was recognised at all - for her roles as Teal in the iffy sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive or as the inept cleaner in Lee Mack's Not Going Out. Come Christmas 2012, however, and she is a frequent (and bearing in mind she is 6ft 1, perhaps unlikely) magazine cover star, a household name and - thanks to this book - already a bestselling author.
Her success is chiefly down to Miranda. Not Miranda herself but her self-titled sitcom. And while it must be said, Miranda and her sitcom persona should not be confused (the real Miranda does not run a joke shop and if she does have a mother as hilariously horrendous as her on-screen mum Patricia Hodge, she doesn't mention it here), this book does nothing to discourage comparisons between the two.
For Miranda on the page sounds almost exactly the same as Miranda on the screen. "My Dear Reader Chum, a very hearty hello to you," she begins. The book is littered with Miranda-isms typical of her TV persona: "good word, 'nub'. Say it loud, say it proud. Wherever you are, one, two, three: NUB" or "We remain unable to deal with any kind of nudity when it's not in a *lowers voice* sexual *back to normal voice* context" - which translate surprisingly well to the page. Miranda even manages to convey her trademark sly asides to the camera in printed form.
The main difference from the series (and I should emphasise that this is not a book of the series) is in fact Miranda's occasional conversations with her younger teenage self, a device that sounds like it should be awful and self-indulgent but somehow works, perhaps because the young Miranda appears to have sounded a lot like Sally Philips' character Tilly from the series: "PHEW. Because talk about total mortificato... No, but seriously. Massivo dweeb alert."
It should also be noted that this is not actually a biography, but more a "Miranduall" (her joke), a guide book to the chief problem areas of life: music, beauty, diets, bodies, dating and more seen through Miranda's own accident-prone perspective. Although perhaps a tad overlong, it's an enjoyable romp and - as with the works of Caitlin Moran, Tina Fey, Tamsin Greig, Katherine Parkinson and others - further undermines the Great Comedy Myth of our age: that woman are apparently not funny. They are.
Such fun!
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