1. Meera Syal FRSL was born on Feroza Syal; 27 June 1961 and is an English comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist and actress.
23 Facts About Meera Syal
1. 2.
Meera Syal 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.
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Meera Syal has become one of the UK's best-known Asian personalities.
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Meera Syal was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1997 New Year Honours and in 2003 was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
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Meera Syal was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to drama and literature.
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Meera Syal attended Queen Mary's High School in nearby Walsall and then studied English and Drama at Manchester University, graduating with a Double First.
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However, she had co-written the one-woman play One of Us with Jackie Shapiro, in which Meera Syal performed all fifteen parts, about a West Midlands-born ethnic Indian girl who ran away from home to become an actress.
8.
Meera Syal wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film Bhaji on the Beach, directed by Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham fame.
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Meera Syal was on the team that wrote and performed in the BBC comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, originally on radio and then on television.
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Meera Syal starred in the eleventh series of Holby City as consultant Tara Sodi.
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Meera 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.
12.
Meera Syal earlier 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.
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Meera Syal won the National Student Drama Award for performing in One of Us which was written by Jacqueline Shapiro while at university.
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Meera Syal 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.
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Meera Syal was given the Nazia Hassan Foundation award in 2003.
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Meera Syal has an honorary degree from SOAS, University of London and from the University of Roehampton.
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Meera Syal received her CBE insignia from the Prince of Wales on 6 May 2015 at Buckingham Palace.
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In 2017, Meera Syal was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Meera Syal married journalist Shekhar Bhatia in 1989; they divorced in 2002.
20.
In January 2005, Meera 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.
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Meera 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.
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Meera Syal's brother is investigative journalist Rajeev Meera Syal, who covers Whitehall, writing stories for The Guardian.
23.
In January 2011, Meera 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.