The Real McCoy

happen?Oh, that happened sort of quite organically, I suppose.

I'd been, um, working on a show called The Real McCoy, which was-

Yes

... amazing.

Our community did.

Mm-hmm.

And so Anil gathered this team of me and Kulvinder, who'd been on The Real McCoy as well, Sanjeev and Nitin Sawney, who were a, a, a duo, a comedy duo.

And, and the night that Anil went to see them, uh, Nina was supporting them.

You know, like No Problem, right? No Problem had phenomenal actors in there.

And The Real McCoy, which was a comedy sketch show.

If that was a white comedy sketch show, all those comedians in there would have had their own shows and gone on to become household names.

The only person that has become that is Mira.

By 1987, Meera could be seen in the feature film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, directed by Stephen Frears, and in the BAFTA-winning ITV series The Little Princess.

Her TV career continued to flourish in the 1990s, with roles in BBC drama series that included Kinsey, Holding On and In Deep, and the comedy series Keeping Mum, as well as being part of the cast of the sketch show The Real McCoy.

In addition to acting, Meera was writing.

She co-wrote the screenplay for the film Bargy on the Beach, released in 1993, the feature debut of Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha.

I think it is.

In the following year, 1997, Meara's contributions across literature, drama and comedy were recognised with an MBE in the Queen's Alara Lara New Year's Honours list of blinded daters.

But it was in 1998 that Meera broke through to an even wider television audience as co-creator and star of the seminal BBC sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, alongside Colvinda Gere, Nina Wadia, Dave Lamb and future guest on this podcast and Meera's husband, they married in 2005, Sanjeev Bhaskar.

From 2001 to 2006, Meera appeared as unfiltered grandmother Umi Kumar in comedy talk show The Kumars at Number 42.