Wolverhampton-born Meera Syal wins BAFTA lifetime achievement award: who is she?

Actress, writer, and journalist Meera Syal CBE FRSL, 61, took home a lifetime achievement award at BAFTA TV awards on Sunday.

The Wolverhampton-born actress, best known for starring in Goodness Gracious Me, called for more diversity “not just in front of the camera but in the writers’ rooms, in makeup vans and around tables where deals are done”.

She dedicated her award “to all my fellow travellers, all the ones who’ve been made to feel because of their race, sex or class that their stories don’t matter. They do because the untold stories are the ones that change us, and sometimes can change the world.”

Who is Meera Syal?

Syal was born in 1963 in a small mining community in Wolverhampton - which became the background for her first novel Anita and Me (1996). Several of her works, including Bhaji on the Beach and Anita and Me, are based in Birmingham.

Born to Indian Punjabi immigrant parents, she has also lived in Bloxwich and attended Queen Mary’s High School in nearby Walsall.

She went to university at Manchester University where she read English and Drama. The talented and versatile actress and writer co-wrote the script for My Sister Wife, a three-part BBC Television series, and wrote the film Bhaji on the Beach, directed by Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham fame. for Channel 4.

Syal has had a long career spanning decades during which co-wrote and was a cast member of the popular BBC Television comedy series Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42 with Sanjeev Bhaskar OBE.

She has also appeared in Doctor Who, The Sadman, Absolutely Anything, Beautiful Thing, The Wheel of Time, Paddington 2 and Doctor Strange.

Meera Syal’s personal life

Syal was married to journalist Shekhar Bhatia from 1989 to 2002. They share a daughter, Milli, who is an Associate Director at The Royal Court Theatre.

In 2005, she married her frequent collaborator Sanjeev Bhaskar, 59. They share a son, Shaan, 17.

Bhaskar has talked about the first time he felt there was a romantic spark between them. He told The Guardian that during a 23-hour flight with the Goodness Gracious Me cast he felt a connection between them.

He said: “We were on such a high – we were being flown first class to promote the show, which had been a hit over there; Meera was releasing her film Anita & Me; and we had just found out that we’d gotten to No 1 on the UK chart with our Comic Relief single with Gareth Gates.”

“The thing with 23 hours in someone’s company is that you get the raw version of each other – especially me, since I can’t sleep on a plane. I had no filter and Meera was very nice about it. It was an intense period, but that intensity made us both realise that we wanted to hang out with each other more.”