Miranda Hart's book details a decade of misery and a career that was put on hold, as she battled ME caused by Lyme disease. Photo / Dave J Hogan, Getty Images
Miranda Hart's book details a decade of misery and a career that was put on hold, as she battled ME caused by Lyme disease. Photo / Dave J Hogan, Getty Images
After a decade away from the spotlight battling ME, the actress and comedian’s new memoir has landed her in controversy.
Those who bought Miranda Hart’s memoir this week expecting a light-hearted romp through the sitcom star’s life might have been a bit surprised. The 51-year-old has written I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, which details a decade of misery and a career that was put on hold, as she battled ME caused by Lyme disease.
It’s not what you expect from a comic actor known for pratfalls and fart jokes in her hit series Miranda. Instead, Hart’s book is full of the lessons she has learnt from being chronically ill, a self-help book for “how to live more freely and joyfully in all circumstances”. She details various “treasures” – the practices, research and ways of thinking that she believes have helped in her recovery, not just for fellow sufferers, but for anyone feeling crushed by modern life.
But while the permanently jolly Call The Midwife star has been doing the rounds promoting her memoir after a four-year break from our screens, controversy has been brewing that some of the claims the book makes about chronic illness are unsubstantiated and potentially harmful.
Dr Frances Ryan, who is a journalist, an activist for those with disabilities and the author of Who Wants Normal?, wrote on X: “Miranda Hart’s new memoir on chronic illness seems very well intentioned but this pseudoscience is worrying. If you’re writing a book after you’ve recovered, there’s a particular responsibility to be accurate to readers who are desperate to recover too.”
Critics have singled out Hart’s citing of a study by Dr Masaru Emoto, a Japanese businessman turned best-selling author, who claimed human emotions could influence the molecular structure of water.
Emoto has now been widely dismissed as a pseudoscientist, but in a section of the book about the importance of self-compassion, Hart recalls how Emoto conducted an experiment in which he spoke to two bowls of rice, one of which received pleasant words, the other abuse. “The bowl spoken badly over started going mouldy in a way the other didn’t,” writes Hart. “I KNOW! Talk about the power of words.”
Hart also writes of “the clear science” linking chronic stress to the onset of long Covid, ME and chronic fatigue syndrome and claims “the cause and the solution are in the brain’s heightened stress response”. But studies on long Covid are in their infancy, and results of studies linking stress to these long-term conditions have been divided.
Many people in the chronic illness community say they hate the presumption that stress has caused their conditions, reporting that this stigma in itself can be a source of stress. One wrote on X: “People are going to be angry today at Miranda Hart. Excerpts from the book are really bad. I am sure we will be seeing posts about it soon. I am so sorry #pwME [people with ME] we don’t deserve this.”
As you might imagine from an author who describes her revelations as “heavy revvies”, Hart is not claiming to have written a science book. But it does seem surprising that she hasn’t at least provided credible sources for all of her assertions.
Equally troubling is that Hart has been associated with some controversial figures who have made unsubstantiated claims about curing long-term conditions. In 2021, Hart endorsed a book by Alex Howard called Decode Your Fatigue. “A hopeful, practical book to help people move from debilitating fatigue to a purposeful, joyful life once again,” Hart gushed on the cover.
Howard is the founder of the Optimum Health Clinic, which teaches courses in the Lightning Process and claims to “train the brain to ward off tired thoughts”, including treating conditions like ME, depression and chronic pain. But in 2022, Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) recommended that the Lightning Process should not be used by GPs. “The Lightning Process is not a treatment that we endorse or recommend for people with ME/CFS,” says Dr Charles Shepherd, medical adviser for the UK ME Association.
The Miranda star has hit back at criticism of her book this week, writing to her 2.2 million followers on X: “I don’t profess to have medical answers for ME. My learning was how to reduce stress in all aspects of my life. Some of it had unexpected positive effects on my physical health. But I would never say I have found an answer. The misunderstanding and lack of answers is just awful for all of us … Finally on the ME front, I am NOT saying stress causes it. For me, Lyme caused it. My body went into severe stress to fight the disease. As bodies naturally do. Reducing stress in other areas of my life helped recovery but was not [the] sole cause or answer. My book isn’t about that.”
I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You reveals how Hart first became unwell at 15 and how her illness developed into chronic fatigue and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). It culminated in her collapsing in her mid-40s after the final series of Miranda, leaving her confined to bed with doctors struggling to diagnose her illness.
Hart recalls how just a short walk outside “was as hard as anything I had done. I would stand in the road feeling as if I had to remind my brain how to put one foot in front of the other. I would look at a cup of tea on the table and wonder if I had the strength to take a sip”.
For many years, Hart says, her symptoms were downplayed or disbelieved by doctors, who told her she was suffering with stress and anxiety and repeatedly offered her antidepressants. In 2020, Hart finally got a diagnosis. She had Lyme disease, most likely contracted at the age of 14 when her family briefly relocated to Virginia in the US, a well-known Lyme hotspot.
Hart certainly isn’t the first celebrity to speak out about her battle with Lyme disease. Bella Hadid, Justin Bieber and Riley Keough have all revealed they also have the infection, which can be notoriously difficult to diagnose. Kris Kristofferson, the country music star who recently died aged 88, also had Lyme, and was once told it was Alzheimer’s.
The condition – which is acquired through the bite of an infected deer tick – can cause flu-like symptoms at first, but the long-term effects can lead sufferers to develop ME, arthritis, chronic pain, heart palpitations and brain inflammation. While the disease is very rare in the UK, with around 1500 laboratory-confirmed cases in England and Wales each year, it’s reportedly on the rise in the US.
However, myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS, is much more common in the UK. While there are no official figures, the charity Action for ME estimates 250,000 people are affected nationwide. Because of the difficulties in receiving a diagnosis, the true number may be as high as 750,000.
Hart’s book will no doubt raise some much-needed awareness for a condition that, at the moment, has no cure. But I Haven’t Been Completely Honest With You isn’t just a misery memoir about a star overcoming chronic illness, Hart has used her time out of the spotlight to find love. In the book, she coyly refers to dating someone whom she refers to as “The Boy” and details how she “open[ed] the Hart heart up to love”.
Comedian Miranda Hart made a shock wedding announcement while promoting the book.
While promoting the book on The One Show, she made a shock wedding announcement, revealing: “He’s my best friend, we have the best fun and I’m just thrilled to be a young bride at 51.”
“The fact that I met someone during a pandemic, during chronic illness when I couldn’t get out of bed or get out of the house, and I really, really wanted to meet someone, I didn’t want to do life on my own any more, and I kind of admitted that to myself and I tell that story in the book,” she said. “The fact that I could meet somebody is not some kind of rom-com story, but it’s hope, there is always hope, things can always change.”
While appearing at Cheltenham Literary Festival, Hart revealed more details about her now-husband, Richard Fairs. The 60-year-old is reportedly a building surveyor who met Hart during the pandemic while treating mould in her house. Their first date involved ordering takeaway pizza to her home.
“Unfortunately, mine had shunted its way across the box and turned into a calzone,” she said. “I was going on and on about my shunted pizza and it did not seem to phase him. We had already been talking for about two hours at this point, and I realised almost immediately that I was in love with him. It was our first date and to my surprise, he came back for a second date, despite me having gone on and on about that pizza.”
Fairs has two children with his ex, Jeanne Speight, whom he was with for over 25 years before they separated in 2017. He proposed to Hart at Kew Gardens and they reportedly married in July at a country church ceremony, which was followed by a Hawaiian-themed party.
In a video on X, Hart seems back to her usual jovial self, unwilling to let her condition or the backlash about her book get her down. “I’ve got my best friend to do life with and it’s wonderful, and I’m also utterly thrilled to be back in telly land and having a book out, so thanks so much for all your support.”
But as one commenter put it: “She’s a lovely lady and I wish her well, but ‘everything fixed and happy ending’ sells books, not ‘there’s no cure for ME’.”
