‘It just has to be really, really funny. I get uncomfortable if no one is laughing. I don’t like it if there’s not a punchline every 15 or 20 seconds.’
In January 2012 Sarah began filming the first series of The Sarah Millican Television Programme. It was an exciting time, especially since her boyfriend, Gary, was working with her too – he would eventually get a writing credit on the show. But she would have to wait two months to see what Britain made of it.
In the meantime, she went on the road again for the last remaining dates of her show, which would finish in May. During that time she also appeared on Celebrity Deal Or No Deal, raising an impressive £20,000 for her chosen charity, Macmillan Cancer Support. It was nerve-racking – especially when the banker offered her £15 and a delicious looking banoffee pie to walk away from a chance at the top prize. The banana and cream treat has always been Sarah’s favourite, and it took a lot of willpower to turn the offer down!
Finally, on 8 March, the first episode of her own show was broadcast. Fans anxiously tuned in to BBC2, excited about what the half-hour slot would bring. But Sarah was worried. ‘Everything’s going too well,’ she had told one reporter on the morning on the show. ‘I’m sure there will be a power cut at 9.55pm and no one will see it.’
At 10pm – after no sign of electrical failure – Sarah’s face was beamed onto television screens up and down the country…
‘Hello and welcome to the Sarah Millican Television Programme – a show that dines at the buffet of TV while choosing to ignore the salad bar,’ she began. ‘I absolutely love telly and it’s taught me all I know. I learnt loads about antiques from watching The Antiques Roadshow. I like it when they find out how much their grandmother’s vase is worth and they pretend they’d never sell it. “Ooh, no, I’d never sell this vase, it reminds me too much of my nana. Hold on – twenty grand? For that much I’d even wash her ashes out of it…”’
She was sitting on a very comfy looking yellow sofa and was sporting a short blonde bob – shorter than her fans had ever seen before. And although she had to be very careful not to swear, or be too crude – a difficult task, considering the adult content of most of her stand-up – her milder jokes were still very funny.
The theme for the first episode was Wildlife and Sex, and with that in mind she had wildlife buff Chris Packham and sexpert Tracey Cox join her for the show – plus a very special extra guest star.
‘When I was a bairn,’ she told the audience, ‘I was obsessed with wildlife programmes. I once asked my mum: “Did dad climb on your back to make me?” Watching wildlife programmes with family can be tricky, especially older members. The sex stuff, plus the bit where the older members of the herd is pushed out to die alone, while the younger members carry on. Bet you’re glad we’re not elephants, eh nana?’
The audience was pleased to be treated to a fair bit of Millican stand-up before the guests were announced. It was, after all, the reason people were watching the show. ‘A 4ft child can fit into the mouth of a hippopotamus. I’m guessing whoever found that out isn’t allowed to babysit anymore…’
She then headed into more risky territory, declaring that she had recently discovered that some people like animals a bit more than others: ‘A survey said that 275,000 Swiss people have had sex with an animal. Which makes you wonder whether those cowbells are a rudimentary rape alarm.’
She asked the audience which animal they would most like to have sex with, and while one woman chose a lion, Sarah once more shared her love for gorillas. ‘I was in Bristol Zoo last year and one definitely gave me the eye,’ she said. ‘I wish I knew more about animals. What I need is an expert… Please welcome a man who can tell us exactly what bears do in the woods – Chris Packham…’
Packham – the star of popular show Springwatch – joined her on stage, where Sarah immediately asked him: ‘Why do you do Springwatch every year? Isn’t it mostly the same?’
Packham laughed and admitted he wished he could change things up by having a tiger on the show, before joining Sarah in the proverbial gutter by saying he sometimes went a little bit ‘moist’ at the sight of a bird. ‘I prefer the feel of feathers to say, fur, or…’ ‘…skin?’ interrupted Millican, giggling.
Packham was good fun, partly down to Sarah’s wonderful interviewing technique, which she had previously used on stage to involve her audience in her stand-up routines. She got him to open up about his bird ‘fetish’, and his love of spiders – but when Packham said that he thought there were far too many domestic cats in the UK, Sarah was almost speechless. ‘But what about all those people who put their clips on YouTube?’ she asked, dismayed.
She showed Packham a series of close-up pictures of body hair, and asked him to decide whether they were man or monkey. His knowledge was impressive and he got all but one right.
The show progressed nicely. It was funny, informative and entertaining – all the main hallmarks of a good chat show. She’d even managed to talk about bestiality on TV – a dubious achievement.
‘So it seems to me that dating and wildlife both involve eating, followed by shagging,’ she said, once Packham had left the stage. ‘The main difference being whether or not Bill Oddie is watching. Penguins mate for life but spend most of their life apart – this seems to be the secret; that and separate bathrooms. Whether I’ve needed it or not, there’s always been someone in my life all too keen to dish out relationship advice. But to be fair to him, he’s been married for 47 years. He’s not here, but we can talk to him now, via the magic of the Internet…’
Sarah announced her next guest to be her dad Philip, and he soon appeared on screen via Skype. For Sarah it was the perfect way to involve her family in her new comedy world. And she knew that Philip was funny – after all, he’d been making her laugh all her life.
Philip smiled and waved to the audience from the family home in South Shields, before recounting a story about how he had met Sarah’s mum. ‘Seemingly, this is what she told me,’ he said in his broad Geordie accent. ‘When she first saw us, I had a sticky plaster just above my nose, on my forehead, and she thought I’d been in a fight. And that I had a nice bum.’
It was immediately obvious where Sarah got her particular sense of humour from, and the audience chuckled. ‘Too much information,’ said Sarah. ‘Had you actually been in a fight?’ Philip said he hadn’t and explained: ‘It was a sticky plaster covering a huge, burst zit.’
‘Oh, what a lovely story,’ Sarah said sarcastically.
She asked her dad to share some dating advice and Philip told the audience that he had always shared his ambitions in life with his wife.
So what were his ambitions? ‘All the mod cons,’ he revealed. ‘Televisions, dishwashers, washing machines – you name it we’d get it. Also, we’d have children…’ ‘I was wondering when I was going to come in,’ Sarah quipped. ‘After the washing machine, obviously.’
Philip was a definite hit, which was no surprise. After being the subject of so many of Sarah’s jokes, he was infamous with her fans, and it was a rare treat to actually ‘meet’ him.
Next Sarah chatted to Tracey Cox, the famous sex expert, and admitted she wasn’t very good at flirting. With that in mind, Sarah had set up a fake cocktail party on the stage, with various actors milling around, ready for her to try out some of Cox’s techniques on.
‘You match your flirting to the type of guy that you’re going to be flirting with,’ Cox explained. ‘Let’s start with that gentleman.’ She pointed to an older, sophisticated looking gent. ‘He’s sort of been around the block, so he’s used to picking up signals. He’s kind of sexy, so you can be sexy and sophisticated with him.’
‘Okay,’ said Sarah, readying herself. ‘I’m going in.’ She sidled up to the silver fox, elbowing one woman out of the way in the process.
‘So what I’d like you to do is what’s called a neck display,’ coached Tracey. ‘Pull your top down, showing your shoulder – it gives him a hint of what you would look like naked.’ She tried to keep a straight face as Sarah exaggerated the move for comic effect. ‘And then sort of like pretend to massage your neck a bit, this sort of makes your breasts look perky,’ she said, before giggling.
Sarah obviously couldn’t quite get the hang of it, because the man immediately walked off. And after a few more attempts at following Cox’s instructions, Sarah gave up. ‘You know what, I’ve got a really nice boyfriend and I got him by just being myself so I think I’ll stick with that,’ she said, to a huge round of applause. Following that, there was just enough time to thank the audience and say goodbye, before Sarah’s first ever show was over…
Over the course of the next six episodes, Sarah mischievously ribbed her guests and gently mocked almost every TV show she had ever watched.
When Noel Edmonds appeared on one episode she had to rein in the gags because he was laughing so hard at her jokes. ‘For the first four questions he just laughed,’ she told The Sun. ‘I kept thinking: “Get him to say something, please”. I was asking him about his beard and boxes but I had to keep a couple of questions hanging as he was just laughing. I thought: “Well this is very flattering, but we aren’t going to get a good interview out of it.”
She left property guru Kirstie Allsop speechless when she questioned the nature of her relationship with co-host Phil Spencer – ‘Everybody thinks they are a couple, so I asked if she had ever thought, “F**k it, I’ll have a go on it?” She sort of implied that it had crossed her mind…’
In the episode Crime and Medical, Crimewatch’s Rav Wilding taught Sarah how to use different things in her handbag as weapons. ‘It was funny, but also useful. If you’ve got experts on, you might as well get a bit of useful information out of them as well as taking the mick.’
Which is exactly what she did with Embarrassing Bodies host, Dr Pixie McKenna, when she got her to try and explain some x-rays for the audience. Alongside the usual keys and bullets, Dr Pixie was shocked when she was shown an x-ray that showed a Buzz Lightyear doll, stuck up a man’s bottom. ‘I’m sure, it wasn’t a Woody,’ Sarah joked, leaving the good doctor speechless.
She was remarkably relaxed on each episode, considering it was her first time hosting a show. But she admitted it helped to have the audience there. She told The Telegraph: ‘I think it’s just the place I feel most at home and I understand that’s a really odd thing to say. It’s still nerve-racking, still terrifying for the first few minutes until I get a few big laughs under my belt, but then, I’m much more relaxed than I am off-stage. I love talking to the audience, because those are the bits that make me feel alive, like a proper comedian as opposed to a funny writer.’
It also helped to have her Dad appear each week. ‘It’s the most relaxed part of the show, as I know he’s got my back,’ she told The Sun. ‘It’s like a tea break in the middle of a panic. I know that he is funny, so he can hold the fort for a couple of minutes while I relax. When you’ve had a proper job in an industry where it can be dangerous, like down the pit, you don’t think being on telly is scary.’
The resulting viewing figures were impressive, with Sarah (and her dad) averaging an audience of just over 1.75 million viewers per episode.
Critics were positive. One stated that Philip was definitely a bonus on the show and observed that they must be the first father and daughter comedy act in television history. Lucy Mangan, writing for The Guardian, said: ‘I laughed many times during The Sarah Millican Television Programme. At first glance, Millican’s is a warm, unthreatening world of gentle comedy about nanas, nighties and nature programmes but, in fact, she’s an iron fist in a Marigold glove. Her deadpan asides and sudden glances to camera have a touch of Eric Morecambe and her sudden shut-downs… are things of simple beauty impossible to reproduce in print.’ Lucy went on to claim she thought the format wasn’t quite right yet, but: ‘Once it is, hopefully television will become Millican’s world and we can live in it.’
Bernadette McNulty wrote a review of the show in The Telegraph that summed Sarah up perfectly: ‘Sarah Millican belongs to the new breed of comedians who come across as reasonably sane. By laughing at her you don’t feel like you are funding any dangerous manias, personality imbalances or drink and drug problems as you do with many compulsive jokers.
‘She looks like your sweet friend who has an immaculate home and always brushes her hair, but gets the laughs coming when she opens her mouth and, in that sing-song South Shields accent, says something unequivocally filthy.
‘Tellingly, the guests sit behind a desk while Millican nestles among Orla Kiely cushions. But there’s nothing soft about her. She’s also not above a bit of gurning at the camera in the great tradition of Les Dawson. All these are hopeful signs she may not be a one-joke pony.’
Almost immediately after the first series ended, BBC2 commissioned work to begin on a second. Sarah took to Twitter to share the news, saying: ‘Thrilled to report that The Sarah Millican Television Programme will be back for a second series.*runs around clapping and jumping*’.
She quickly released a formal statement to the media, detailing how much she had enjoyed the first series and saying that she couldn’t wait to get cracking on the second, which would be broadcast in January 2013.
Everyone wanted to know whether Philip would be returning to the show, as he had collected quite a fan base following his string of appearances. ‘People are constantly asking me if my dad is coming back on the next series – he is,’ she told The Mirror. ‘Before we had even told him… he had bought new shirts. Then he rang and said, “I’m not saying I want to do it, but if you want me, I’ve got me shirts.”’
The show was the success that Sarah had hoped it would be and she promptly went on holiday to celebrate. In April, she travelled with a group of friends to the lakes in Cumbria, where she stayed in a cosy cottage.
It’s actually something she admits she does regularly. ‘I spend such a lot of time touring,’ she says. ‘So every few months I try to get away for a few days with a couple of girlfriends who are also comedians. After so many nights in hotels, a holiday is about being able to get up in the middle of the night and make some toast.’
A month later she decided to go further afield – this time with her big sister to New York. Sarah was grateful when Victoria took control of the overseas holiday. ‘She took my passport and kept it safe,’ she told The Sunday Times. ‘It was like being a child again. Our day would begin when she knocked on my door and said, “You look comfy”. I don’t always get when people are being complimentary, but I know that “comfy” is not a compliment. Apart from that she was a good travel companion.’
Sarah was a definite ‘dodgem’ on the trip. ‘I have this image of myself as someone who shuns all those touristy things and ventures off the beaten track,’ she explained. ‘With this in mind, I saw lots of shows, went up the Empire State Building and did the open-top bus tour. That’s how adventurous I actually am.’
When she returned, she announced that she had been offered yet more work – this time as a TV columnist for the Radio Times. Editor Ben Preston was thrilled to have her on his team. ‘Sarah is that rare thing, a comedian who is genuinely warm and optimistic about life, wonderfully funny and a gifted writer. And she knows – and loves – her telly, too.’
By now her workload must have been gruelling, but her ambition – and ultimately her capability at handling it all – was no surprise. Sarah had always been a hard worker, and now she was at the top, she knew she had to keep working hard to stay there. Even if it meant she would be writing a TV show, filming, touring and now penning a column, all at the same time.
Nonetheless, it must have been both a relief and a disappointment not to be appearing at Edinburgh in the summer. It meant that Sarah could truly enjoy the experience, and she made the most of it by going to see a wide range of shows, including those of her friends Joe Lycett, Juliet Meyers and Sally-Anne Hayward.
In October, Sarah announced that a recording of her Thoroughly Modern Millican tour – which took in a collective audience of over 200,000 – would be released as a DVD in time for Christmas. Sarah loved the idea that a lot of her new fans would have only seen her toned-down TV persona, and would be unprepared for her much naughtier stage act. ‘People will think, “Oh, we’ll put it on after Christmas dinner with Nana and the bairns”,’ she said. ‘Then they’ll put it on and very quickly pause it and put the bairns to bed so they can watch it with Nana who, let’s face it, knows exactly what I’m talking about.’
As 2012 drew to a close, Sarah had a lot to be happy about. With her best-selling DVD, a record-breaking tour and countless popular TV show appearances, she had everything she’d ever hoped for and so much more. She had even just bought her first house, and had moved Chief Brody in just in time for Christmas.
2013 was destined to be another very good year.