Comedian and writer Meera Syal has been a household name since she played Sanjeev Bhaskar’s grandmother Ummi in The Kumars at No. 42, and has often used comedy to explore family dynamics.
She met her husband, comedian and TV presenter Sanjeev, while working on Goodness Gracious Me in the 1990s. They have been together ever since, marrying in secret in 2005. Meera said at the time that they were both “ecstatically happy”.
Sanjeev says 63-year-old Meera’s aubergine lasagne and lemon drizzle cake are “phenomenal”. In fact, in everything she does, she is “just much better” than her husband – according to her husband.
Family is important to her, which made her role in A Tupperware of Ashes all the more meaningful.
Meera Syal’s father was diagnosed with dementia in 2012
Playing Queenie in the play A Tupperware of Ashes – at the National Theatre in late 2024 – led Meera Syal to reflect once again on her relationship with her parents.
Queenie, her character, finds out she has early-onset dementia. Over time, her family has to come to terms with her neuro-degeneration.
She never got over it.
This is something Meera – on the Great Celebrity Bake Off this weekend (April 6) – herself had to do in the early to mid 2010s. Her father got a dementia diagnosis in 2012, and went into care shortly afterwards. Meera shared caregiving duties with her brother. She became an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society in 2013.
“It was shocking. I saw a couple that barely left each other’s side for 60 years forcibly separated and it broke my mum. She never got over it,” she told the Times last autumn.
Nor did Meera – but theatre has helped her explore the pain of grief meaningfully
Meera’s father died in 2018. Five years later, her mother also died from the neurodegenerative disease. Losing both her parents to the same fate inevitably had a profound effect on her.
“It was really hard and really stressful. There’s no cure and you suddenly realise what life is about and everything else feels unimportant. My mum used to say: ‘Thank you,’ a lot of the time and I used to say: ‘You don’t have to thank us.’ It was a chance to give back all the care they gave us.”
Before dementia eventually took them, it changed the relationship Meera had with her mum and dad. She talks about role reversal, and becoming the parent in the parent-child dynamic.
However, Meera said A Tupperware of Ashes was an opportunity to reconnect with her parents, and to heal.
“I’ll never get over that grief. But I think that’s what theatre is for. To explore those painful areas together.”
Meera Syal is among the celebs competing on The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer this year. It continues Sundays at 7:40pm on Channel 4.
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