Cradling her beloved poochon dog Patti in the back of a taxi, Miranda Hart beams as she shows off her gold wedding ring.
On her way home from her appearance on The One Show, during which she confirmed she had secretly married a building surveyor, she told her Instagram followers: ‘Hello, just on my way back with my little Patti falling asleep on my lap.
‘I just wanted to say thank you so much for the lovely messages. I’ve got my best friend to do life with and it’s wonderful.’
She then high-fived her new husband who was sitting next to her but out of the sight of the camera. All we saw of the new Mr Hart was his left hand.
Naturally the world was agog about the identity of the chap who had finally made an honest woman of a star who had increasingly come to resemble her chronically single TV alter ego, who had had so many well-documented romantic struggles over the years.
And yesterday photographs of the man thought to be her new husband emerged for the first time. The couple were seen on Lime rental bikes, cycling along the River Thames tow path by Hammersmith Bridge, a stone’s throw from her home. However, the star’s agent did not confirm or deny whether it was indeed the new Mr Hart.
It would appear that, despite breaking the news of her nuptials to millions of viewers via the BBC’s flagship magazine show, the much-loved comic is content to leave him in the shadows, for now at least.
But earlier in the evening, Miranda had been visibly over the moon. ‘It’s the best!’ she said. ‘He’s my best friend, we have the best fun … The fact that I could meet somebody – it’s not a rom-com story but it’s hope, and that’s why, I think, whatever situation you’re in, there’s always hope that things really do change.’
I’m told that her new husband was backstage at The One Show during her appearance and, while he was not seen in front of the camera on Tuesday night, he does appear in her new book, an autobiography entitled, I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, which is out today.
In it, she tells the heart-warming story of how they met. The couple first set eyes on each other during lockdown when he came round to sort out a mould problem at her bachelorette pad in Hammersmith, west London, and they wed in secret earlier this year.
‘He’s my husband,’ she writes in her autobiography.
‘I met my best friend and the love of my life who brings me more silliness, laughter, joy, support, care and safety than I thought possible in a person, because I lost my house due to mould illness and he was the building surveyor on the house remediation project.’
Her mystery man, who she describes as ‘good looking’, with salt and pepper hair and fine features, proposed while they were on a walk in Kew Gardens – three miles from her £3 million home.
She says his getting down on one knee prompted her to ‘burst into tears because.. Hello?! He was asking me to marry him.’
In another clue to his identity, Miranda says he is from the south west of England, describing him as a ‘Bristol Boy’, and adds that ‘he has a dog’.
One former colleague of Miranda, 51, says that this represents a ‘dream’ scenario for Miranda: ‘Her dog Patti is Miranda’s life, she loves dogs and she loves people who love dogs.’
Clues to her new romantic status have been there for all to see for a couple of years now. In December, 2022, Miranda spent her milestone 50th birthday with her new beau in a lavish lakeside cabin nestled in the Sussex village of Ditchling.
She wrote on Instagram: ‘Ten years ago at my 40th birthday party a friend jokingly said to me “So, what will you do for 50?”
‘I replied, not joking, “My dream is I’m in a snowy log cabin with someone I love.” I don’t know why I had that dream for 50 before my 40s had begun – but it came true this week.
‘Dreams can come true. Many of mine have.’
There were though, no details of Miranda’s new man, nor a picture. Instead, she restricted herself to shots of their idyllic snowy views and one of her reclining on a sunbed.
Miranda first found fame in 2009, when she was catapulted into the limelight by the runaway success of her eponymous sitcom, which follows her quest to find ‘the perfect man’ and her on-off relationship with dishy chef Gary Preston, played by hunky actor Tom Ellis.
Sadly, at the time it appeared to have been about as close to a romance as Miranda got.
So it is perhaps not surprising that friends of the star, who also had a three-year stint as Camilla ‘Chummy’ Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne in the BBC drama series Call The Midwife, were shocked when she told them of her new man.
‘Whenever I told any of my friends I had met someone, they all simply paused, confused and said, “How?”,’ she recalls in her new book.
‘It’s not a high probability… housebound [with] illness and [during] a global pandemic, for a knight in shining armour to appear on the doorstep but he did.’
Following the mould visit, Miranda and her Bristol Boy spoke a couple of times on the phone before he returned for a ‘socially distanced’ date in her living room.
Admitting it was her first romantic assignation in a long time, Miranda writes: ‘The date therefore consisted of a cup of tea in my sitting room, with some social distancing in force, passing biscuits to each other at arm’s length.’
They went on to enjoy a trip to Dorset, where they stayed in a cottage and enjoyed walks in the park with their dogs and pottery-making dates.
She writes: ‘He didn’t give a rat’s arse (his words) what I did
for a living. In fact, on any occasions we did talk about my work, we would laugh about how he hadn’t seen it.
‘If a show with me popped up, he would switch off pretty quickly as he didn’t want to know the person on the TV.
‘It was such a gift to have someone say it was the real me that they wanted to know, and to be complimented on aspects of myself I might have forgotten.’
Despite taking a break because they weren’t ready to become an ‘us’ – leaving Miranda heartbroken – the pair reunited shortly after.
‘Our time apart had shown us that we had indeed fallen hopelessly in love with each other. The boy became the boyfriend and never did I think I could ever meet anyone who could, so genuinely, be perfect for me in every way.’
Fans of the actress will be delighted to hear she has finally found love, because during Miranda’s rise to fame, she was dogged for years by questions about her real-life love life.
It was a subject on which the comedian has remained tight-lipped – until now.
After arriving on the showbiz scene with such gusto 15 years ago, Miranda became an almost instant national treasure. Part of what made her so endearing was that she came across as an antidote to celebrity.
Born in Torquay in December, 1972, Miranda Katherine Hart Dyke is the daughter of Captain David Hart Dyke, an officer in the Royal Navy and a member of
the aristocratic Hart Dyke family, and Diana Margaret Luce. Miranda’s dad was commanding officer of HMS Coventry when it was sunk during the 1982 Falklands conflict by an Argentine fighter and he was badly burned as he made his escape from the stricken warship.
She grew up in Petersfield, Hampshire, and was privately educated at Downe House, a boarding school for girls near Thatcham, Berkshire. There she became friends with the now TV sports presenter Clare Balding, who was head girl.
Next stop was the University of the West of England, Bristol, where Miranda graduated with a 2:1 in political science.
She then completed a postgraduate course in acting at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA), south west London.
Then, in 2002, she performed a solo show in Edinburgh, and two years later pitched a sitcom to the BBC. At her read-through for BBC executives, Absolutely Fabulous writer and star Jennifer Saunders was present.
The rest, as they say, is history. But Miranda’s success masked private pain. She once described how she had some tough years ‘housebound with a fatigue-based chronic illness’ that took a ‘long time’ to be diagnosed.
She added: ‘Which sadly I know a lot of people will know – you miss life a lot. So I’m thrilled to be sitting here.’ Miranda says her problems began in her mid-teens: ‘Probably when I was about 14 or 15, I got a tick-borne illness… and that’s when my symptoms started,’ she said.
Ticks are tiny spider-like creatures which are found in areas of heath and woodland throughout the UK. Not everyone who gets bitten by a tick will be infected, since only a small proportion of them carry the bacteria which causes a condition known as Lyme Disease.
Indeed, a tick bite can only cause the condition in humans if the tick involved has already bitten an infected animal.
Miranda’s condition wasn’t properly diagnosed until sometime after she reached adulthood. ‘It was such a relief,’ she recalled. ‘I mean, being misunderstood and misjudged is one of the hardest things about these kinds of conditions. For sure.’
Now she has also finally found happiness in her personal life. On the final page of her book she writes: ‘Finally there are two men [or perhaps she meant just the one] without whom this book wouldn’t exist.
‘The Boy, or The Husband, who listened with patience and kindness not only to sections of the book, but to the moaning of the process and worries of not getting it done.
‘And made me countless meals and snacks along the way to keep me going. Husband, you are truly the greatest gift to my life.’