Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 197

Evening Standard Thursday 4 March 2004 45 Sean Penn and Naomi Watts add weight to 21 Grams Films pages 46-47 London boy Lemar bares his metro soul Review Page 49 Best known for her grotesquely comic TV characters the writer and actress is about to play one of her own inventions on stage interview by Nick Curtis Role swap: Syal left will take over for a week from Nila Aslia above as Kitty made an MBE in 1996 it confirmed her as a figurehead of multicul-turalism in the arts but a reluctant one have changed she says I was growing up girls like me on telly or on stage We anywhere Now got Adrian Lester fronting a major drama series Hustle and all the major soaps have got at least a sprinkling of different kinds of faces there is still a glass ceiling Where is our Bill Cosby our Whoopi Goldberg the person who can carry a Has she made a personal difference? She shrugs I have just by being around The previous generations opened all the Put her confidence and her modesty down to her upbringing Sikh mother and Hindu father fled Delhi after partition in 1961 and ended up in the West Midlands Syal was bom in 1964 and until the birth of her brother eight years later she was the lone child in the defunct mining village of Essington absorbing equal parts Punjabi tradition and Black Country bluntness Given her subsequent choice of not one but two uncertain professions it is no wonder that Syal is wary of lots of have put money on Bombay she says based on a pop output or a film it features a whole new culture and an unknown cast And even though composer AR Rahman is a demi-god in India he was unknown to anyone here who watch Hindi NDREW Lloyd pioneering London production is now two years old and safely in profit even if it earned Syal the £4 million that a recent Rich List wrongly proclaimed not bringing me untold riches because it's an expensive show to she protests accountant almost had an aneurysm when he saw that list The New York production where Hindi culture is less visible is a gamble stab at Broadway is says Syal it could all easily go belly Is her London stint as Kitty for a week from 16 March a bid to drum up more acting work just in case it docs all go wrong? enough I worry more about acting than I do about writing the always there whereas got more to prove she says I was young I had so much to say now and Bhattia says the same There is a new man recently on the scene but Syal jinx the relationship by identifying him THE 1990s she turned to screenplays (Bhaji on the Beach) and novels although the sharp analysis of the immigrant experience in her books was arguably overshadowed by the runaway success of Goodness Gracious Me Now though there is another novel germinating at the back of her mind another series of the Kumars in the pipeline and meaty acting roles in Bad Giris and The Bill coming up problem with doing lots of Tve only just got over the feeling that I'm the girl who tries so hard at school she gets an A for effort' EERA eyes are shining not next New York premiere of Bombay Dreams the Bollywood musical she scripted that has the 39-year-old Anglo-Indian writer and actress excited not that Syal is Mgoing back on the to take the role of Kitty the ghastly Hindi gossip columnist in the London production not even the fact that her second novel Life All Ha Ha Hee Hee is about to be filmed for the BBC No Syal is humming with delight because of a recent lunch with Thomas Meehan the veteran Broadway scribe who is helping her Bombay Dreams walked into the restaurant and Tom said This is Mel" she worrying about how good you look you doing your job properly' says it was Mel Brooks! He delivered this 20-minute monologue about his onion allergy and 1 know if he was Joking or not I just sat there like a complete twit because I adore him" When she could get a word in Syal offered Brooks a theory she once communicated by letter to Woody Allen that with their shared belief in matriarchy food and guilt Indians and Jews are the same race separated only by suntan and different when he ran out of the Syal grins Woody Allen never replied either: The blend of assurance and ruthless self-mockery just about sums up Meera Syal She is a household name thanks to the hit TV comedies Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42 but her best gags involve her disguising her undeniable good looks to appear absurd even grotesque have shied away from glamorous she says you are worrying about how good you look you doing your job When she was and no way of saying it Now I feel got the reserves but much as I resent the fact it is harder to get parts as you get Syal came to acting in her twenties but started writing as a child then I tell the difference between my imagination and she says call that psychosis now I After graduating from Manchester University in English and drama she passed up an MA course in psychotherapy and created a solo show One of Us about an Anglo-Indian girl torn between tradition and rebellion was a spewing forth of all held back my swansong before I got a respectable she says never thought it would go The show toured the country won a National Student Drama Award in Edinburgh and Syal came to London aged 22 parents know this but I was homeless for a she says She dossed on floors and was turned down for countless flat-shares because she gave her profession as actress" Eventually she found a room in Stratford and some good theatrical roles While appearing in Caryl Serious Money at the Royal Court she met her husband journalist Shekhar Bhattia with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter Chamila and from whom she separated four years ago still respect and adore him and we have a great says Syal things is that you are looked on as a Jill of all trades and a mistress of she says only just got over the feeling that the girl who tries so hard at school she gets an A for Syal is ever reluctant to blow her own trumpet But she will boast about one thing: her daughter has just won a bursary to study music Indian she shouts in a suddenly staccato Punjabi accent thumping her chest daughter the Fiona Maddocks is away 4-.