Miriam Margolyes is known for shooting from the hip and telling people exactly what she thinks, and things were no different when she was asked about the lockdown on Monday’s This Morning.
The Call The Midwife star had a typically Miriam Margolyes response as she backed prime minister Boris Johnson’s address to the nation, in which he outlined that lifting the lockdown too soon would risk “a new wave of death and disease”.
Speaking to hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on the ITV daytime show, she said: “I actually don’t give a stuff about the economy, I want people to survive. So I think Boris Johnson is completely right about that. He’s not right about anything else, but he is right about that.”
On how she was coping with the situation herself, Miriam said: “Not very well actually, I don’t like it but I’m keeping all the rules and doing the right thing. It’s the only time I ever thought that I would agree with Mr. Johnson, but I do and we’ve all just got to stick it.
“I didn’t think that I was going to have to spend the rest of my life sitting in my kitchen. But I have got a garden… and that’s lovely.
“I’ve been out in the garden a lot, but I won’t do housework. I won’t do exercises. I just really do Netflix and read books and chat to my friends. And I call out to the neighbours across the road, so I am rather noisy.”
Miriam also said she had been out sitting on the front steps of her Victorian house “shouting at people going past” for some company.
She joked; “I bought [my house] in 1973 for £21,500. Now it’s worth over a couple of million. So who’s a clever girl? But I had to borrow the money from my parents to get it. Because I didn’t earn squidly squat when I was starting.
“I sit on the top step and I just shout at people going past. It’s human contact. Some run a mile of course, but some do come and talk to me and that’s lovely.”
Miriam is isolating separately from her partner of over 50 years, Heather, as they do not normally live together.
The actor said she would have “loved” to have been locked down together, but admitted: “I don’t know whether she would because she’s an introvert. So she likes to be quiet and get on with her work.
“I was lucky enough to find someone who was prepared to love me, I’m not that loveable - I’m smelly and noisy and all that sort of thing. But she loves me and I want to be with her for the rest of my life, that’s all I want.”
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.