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      Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Chapter 1 The Early Years

       Chapter 2 Life Begins at 29

       Chapter 3 Laughter as Therapy

       Chapter 4 Standing Up

       Chapter 5 On the Road

       Chapter 6 Firm Friends and First Awards

       Chapter 7 When Sarah Met Gary

       Chapter 8 Sarah Millican’s Not Nice

       Chapter 9 Lights, Camera, Action!

       Chapter 10 Sarah Goes Down Under

       Chapter 11 Preparing for A Typical Woman

       Chapter 12 Women In Comedy

       Chapter 13 A Walk on the Wild Side

       Chapter 14 Your Favourite Aunty

       Chapter 15 Sarah Millican’s Support Group

       Chapter 16 Panel Show Prowess

       Chapter 17 Chatterbox

       Chapter 18 Fringe Benefits

       Chapter 19 Performing For Royalty

       Chapter 20 The Loose Woman

       Chapter 21 On the Sofa with P Diddy

       Chapter 22 Thoroughly Modern Millican

       Chapter 23 The Queen of Comedy Rocks with Laughter

       Chapter 24 The Sarah Millican Television Programme

       Chapter 25 Comedy Gold

       EPILOGUE Home Bird and Beyond

       Plates

       Copyright

       CHAPTER 1

       The Early Years

      ‘I don’t think a lot of the girls I was at school with would have thought for a second that I would be doing this for a living. I see it as a regeneration – you know, like in Doctor Who – I am a version of that person, but it’s a totally different version.’

      Sarah Millican has come a very long way since she first decided to try her hand at stand-up comedy, aged 29. While other comics spend decades performing to small crowds in pubs and clubs, it has taken Sarah just eight whirlwind years to be crowned Britain’s new first lady of funnies.

      Sarah’s brand of comedy could easily be described as defiant. The Geordie comic has certainly had to fight her way through life – elbows out – in order to rise to the top of the UK’s crowded list of comedy talent.

      But it was her challenging early years that first put her on the path to becoming the queen of filthy humour that she is today. Instead of accepting her lot, she channelled even her toughest breaks into a special brand of Millican fuel – which would quickly ignite her stellar career. And having a tough, caring family was central to her ability to see the humour in the negative.

      Not long after her parents, Philip and Valerie, got married, they found themselves sitting on a bus, behind a little girl who was excitedly chattering away non-stop. It was an endearing sight, and one that prompted Philip to say: ‘I want one of those…’

      And that’s exactly what they eventually got – a little chatterbox who they named Sarah. The couple already had a small but perfectly formed family when Valerie fell pregnant with their second child. Their eldest, Victoria, was six when baby Sarah was brought back to the Millican family home in South Shields, on the mouth of the River Tyne, east of Newcastle.

      It was May 1975, the same year that saw the birth of American comedian Chelsea Handler, comedy actor Zach Braff and presenting duo Declan Donnelly and Ant McPartlin.

      It was also the same year that Charlie Chaplin was knighted by the Queen, the same year that the comedy classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail was released, and the first year that unemployment exceeded 1,000,000 in the UK.

      Fellow comedians Eric Idle and Steve Furst also hail from the area that Sarah called home – a pretty coastal town that experienced a boom in the 19th century because of its two main industries – shipbuilding and coalmining.

      But the last shipbuilder, John Redhead and Sons, closed in 1984, while the last coal pit, Westoe Colliery, stopped mining in 1993 – nearly 10 years after the miners’ strike devastated the north east.

      Sarah was a small child during that strike, and was heavily affected by the turbulent times. Her father was an electrical engineer for one of the area’s many pits, and had already seen strike action before Sarah was born.

      Philip was a union branch secretary during the 1972 industrial action – a role that taught him a lot about staring down bullies and coming through tough times. And he went on to instil these values in his daughter, Sarah.

      The miners’ strike of 1984–85 was an even harsher time in British history – a period that has been immortalised in the film and the theatre hit Billy Elliot, in the BAFTA-nominated film Brassed Off and in countless books. Tens of thousands of miners went on strike to take a stand against poor pay conditions and the threat of numerous pit closures, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A staggering 20,000 jobs were lost as Thatcher took on the unions and it was a period of extreme hardship for the dedicated workers and their families.

      Philip was one of those who went out on strike with his fellow miners and it inevitably resulted in tough times for Sarah’s family.

      During the year-long strike the family lived on £2 a week, but luckily Philip had talked the local shops into giving the miners bread and other foods past their sell-by date so they could feed their families.

      Even then Sarah could see the funny side of the situation. ‘We’d get end-of-day stuff, pies and cream cakes and bashed tins, that sort of thing,’ she has since explained. ‘And then I remember one of the higher-end supermarkets decided they wanted to help out and they gave us 13 trays of avocados, and all of the miners went, “I don’t know what to do with an avocado”. We’d literally never seen one before.’

      But even with the handouts their finances were stretched to breaking point, and Sarah’s uncle would spend hours on the beach collecting driftwood for fuel.

      Sarah and Victoria had no money for the bus to school and back. Instead they walked everywhere in tight shoes because the family couldn’t afford new ones.

      She remembers getting huge blisters on her poor feet, which bled painfully. Sarah suffered in silence, even when her feet were hurting. ‘I didn’t say anything because

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