Britain’s favourite singleton Miranda Hart was spotted with a mystery man on a bike ride just months before her secret boyfriend popped the question, MailOnline can reveal today.
The real-life Bridget Jones revealed on the One Show last night she married the building surveyor this year at the age of 51 after he proposed in Kew Gardens, West London.
The comedian has gone to lengths not to reveal his identity, referring to him in her new book I Haven’t Been Completely Honest With You as simply ‘The Boy’ or ‘The Mould Man’.
The man, who she met when he came to fix a mould problem in her £2million home, is described as ‘salt-and-pepper greying hair look on a fine featured man’.
Now an excited fan has questioned whether they in fact spotted Miranda with the ‘love of [her] life’ and ‘best friend’ in October last year.
Miranda Hart spotted cycling with a mystery man on a towpath near Hammersmith Bridge, close to where the BBC star lives
This pictures shows a mystery man pictured outside Miranda’s house
Miranda gave fans a first glimpse of her husband in a post on Instagram
The funny woman was spotted cheerfully cycling on a towpath near Hammersmith Bridge, close to where the BBC star lives.
The pair were seen together on a crisp October day riding electric bikes through the park as they appeared deep in conversation.
A source told MailOnline: ‘I spotted Miranda cycling down the towpath last year with a gentleman and it did get me thinking whether they were together.
‘I took the picture of her and the man, who we believe to be her partner, riding a bike down on the towpath near Hammersmith Bridge.’
Miranda took to social media yesterday to give fans a playful first glimpse of her husband, telling them in an Instagram clip: ‘I’ve got my best friend to do life with and it’s wonderful. And I’m also utterly thrilled to be back in tele land and having a book out. Um so yeah, thanks so much for all your support.
‘High-five husband. Ho ho. Exclusive, his hand. Bye,’ leaving fans chuckling along. In the caption, she penned a touching note: ‘Thank you for being happy that I am happy. You’re very sweet and kind. And how we met is a little reveal in the book I hope you enjoy. X.’
The comedian first announced the news that she is married live on The One Show on Tuesday night after a flurry of rumours.
Speaking to Alex Jones and Alex Scott about her mystery husband, Miranda, 51, declared ‘someone’s put a ring on it’ as she revealed she met ‘my person’ at the age of 49.
Going into detail in her memoir about how he popped the question, the actress explained that her boyfriend suggested the couple go to the gardens for a walk on an ‘ordinary January day’.
She wrote: ‘We stood still on the bridge overlooking the lake when the silence was pierced as he rather seriously said, ‘Miranda’. I turned around and as I did he got down on one knee. ‘Miranda…’
Miranda revealed the sweet details of her romantic proposal at Kew Gardens in her new book I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You
The 51-year-old comedian announced the news that she is married live on The One Show on Tuesday night after a flurry of rumours
Miranda, who has been Britain’s most single woman for more than 15 years, offered more of of an insight into her relationship in her new memoir (pictured on her sitcom)
‘I don’t remember anything else because I simply burst out out crying, apparently saying yes before he had finished the sentence (awkward if he’d been tying a shoelace…)’
She emotionally penned: ‘I didn’t think a traditional proposal would affect me so.
‘But there was someone knowing all my ridiculousness and brokenness and still willing to bend down, lookup and commit to loving me and standing by me for the rest of his life.’
Miranda later described her husband as kind, loving, and really fun,’ before dramatically writing: ‘He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my husband. We got married when I was fifty-one.’
During her exciting announcement on The One Show, she gushed: ‘I’m married, I got married at 51 and it’s just so lovely!’
‘I’d written Gary [Tom Ellis] for onscreen Miranda and it wasn’t until I was 49 that I met my person,’ she declared, but insisted she would keep her husband’s identity a secret.
‘It’s a little undercurrent in the book, I’m not going to reveal how we met because that’s a little bit of a twist. He’s my best friend, we had the best fun and I’m just thrilled to be a young bride at 51.’
The star added that she hoped readers of her book will feel hope from her love story, explaining; ‘The fact that I met someone during a pandemic, during chronic illness, when I couldn’t get out of bed or out of the house… I really, really wanted to meet someone, I didn’t want to do life on my own anymore.’
Miranda revealed that the emotional proposal happened in London’s Kew Gardens (pictured above)
Speaking to Alex Jones and Alex Scott , Miranda declared ‘someone’s put a ring on it’ as she revealed she met ‘my person’ at the age of 49
The front cover of Miranda’s new book ‘I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You’
‘I’d written Gary for onscreen Miranda and it wasn’t until I was 49 that I met my person,’ she joked of her onscreen persona (pictured with Tom Ellis , who plays Gary, in Miranda)
‘The fact that I could meet somebody, it’s not some sort of romcom story but it’s hope. Whatever situation you are in, there is always hope, things really do change.’
The star first set tongues wagging about the new man in her life during publicity for the memoir, teasing in her inimitable style that she ‘couldn’t possibly say if there is a love story in it… (There is – shush) Exciting.’
She has also been spotted wearing a wedding band in recent videos and snaps posted on Instagram, where she has a million followers, whilst locals near her £2million West London home have seen her with a mystery man.
Miranda offered more of an insight into her relationship in her new memoir.
She confirmed she has tied the knot with a man she met during lockdown when he came to fix the mould in her £2million house.
Referring to her new husband only as ‘The Boy from Bristol’ or ‘The Mould Man’, the comedian kept his identity a secret but gushed over how handsome he is with ‘fine features’ and ‘salt and pepper grey hair’.
Miranda made the shock revelation in the final pages of her new memoir, I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You.
In the book, she writes: ‘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.
‘Yes my love was Mr Mould Man/ My Mr Mould Man/ The Boy/ The Boy from Bristol/ The Boyfriend.
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you, he’s not my boyfriend, he’s my husband. We got married when I was 51.’
Miranda explained her friends could not believe it when she first started dating him, due to the fact the UK was in lockdown and her house was crippled with damp issues.
She added: ‘Whenever I told any of my friends I had met someone, they all simply paused, confused and said how it’s not a high probability with housebound illness and a global pandemic for a knight in shining armour to appear on the doorstep but he did. To de-mould me…”
Going into detail in her memoir about how he popped the question, the actress wrote: ‘We stood still on the bridge overlooking the lake when the silence was pierced as he rather seriously said, ‘Miranda'(pictured at the ‘Spy’ film premiere in London in 2015)
Miranda set tongues wagging after she was spotted wearing a wedding band in recent videos and snaps posted on Instagram
Miranda pictured in a wedding dress in one of the episodes of her hit comedy
Miranda catapulted to fame with her self-titled BBC sitcom in 2009, in which her fictional mother Penny exclaims ‘Such fun!’ whenever she thinks her daughter is about to bag a boyfriend. It follows her quest to find ‘the perfect man’ and her dalliance with dishy chef Gary.
The actress, who played nurse Chummy in Call The Midwife and Miss Bates in Emma, revealed over the summer that she has been battling a chronic illness for three years.
She wrote online last week: ‘Big news – book out in a week. I share lots of stories of my last decade – mainly what I have learnt living with chronic illness – but there’s lots of fun and some of my own big news.’
And in a publicity blurb for the book on Amazon, out on Thursday, she writes she has had an ‘unexpectedly difficult decade – there have been surprising joys, but also deep revelations and challenging lows. I shall be honest about those, because what I discovered in the difficult times were my, what I call, treasures’.
‘Treasures – practical tools, values, ways, answers researched from some great scientists, neuroscientists, therapists, sociologists (all the ‘ists’) out there, that have genuinely led to a sense of freedom, joy, peace and physical recovery I never would have thought possible.
‘Life now, amazingly, with what I will share, is – such fun (always important to quote your own catch phrases)! If you fancy having a read, then I hope my story might help your story. After all, we are in this beautiful, mysterious, challenging life together.’
The comic, whose father was commanding officer of HMS Coventry, sunk by Argentina in 1982, has previously joked about her love life, saying:
‘I was very naive sexually. My first boyfriend asked me to do missionary and I buggered off to Africa for six months.’
The actress, who played nurse Chummy in Call The Midwife and Miss Bates in Emma, revealed over the summer that she had been battling a chronic illness for years.
Speaking about her years spent housebound by her illness, Miranda told The One Show on Tuesday: ‘It’s not been the most pleasant few years, I’ve mainly been in bed or housebound with chronic illness, so it’s been a tough few years, nearly decade, which is what my book is charting.’
‘It’s so nice to be back in the television, I’m so excited to be here. Once you have been bed bound with a fatigue-base chronic illness which takes a long time to diagnose, you miss life a lot so I’m thrilled to be here. ‘
‘Part of the story of the book is the discovery of what could help. I needed to research this whole wellness expertise which is out there.’
‘I was in bed at home alone and doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. I couldn’t have a yoga retreat so what are the universal truths. I did years of research. . In the book there are ten keys, which I call my treasures, for living well.’
‘I’m living a life of joy and meaning and fulfilment which I never had before.’
As for what’s next for the star, she told The One Show that after her book ‘I’m really keen to get back to some silliness now. I miss laughter, I don’t have any ideas yet, they haven’t percolated through. But I miss fooling around.’
In her new memoir, set to be released on October 10, Miranda, who has taken a break out of the spotlight for nearly the past decade, talks about her plight and the moment she ‘collapsed’ from ill health.
While fans know her as Chummy in Call The Midwife and for her cheery self-titled sitcom, Miranda has admitted behind closed doors she was desperately telling doctors: ‘I feel toxic and poisoned’.
It took medics 33 years to discover Miranda had been battling with the bacterial infection Lyme Disease, after initially mislabelling her as being agoraphobic – an anxiety disorder characterised by symptoms of anxiety in situations.
While fans know her as Chummy in Call The Midwife and for her cheery self-titled sitcom, Miranda has admitted behind closed doors she was desperately telling doctors: ‘I feel toxic and poisoned’
Excerpt taken from Miranda’s memoir I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You – out Thursday October 10
She recalls running out of a doctor’s appointment in floods of tears after they told her she was ‘TATT’ – ‘Tired All The Time’ and said: ‘I just don’t know what to do with you’.
The comic officially received the diagnosis in lockdown and believes she contracted Lyme Disease when she was 14 after battling nasty flu-like symptoms in Virginia.
She writes: ‘For me it was the unnerving neurological symptoms that I had got initially, aged fourteen, from Lyme, which I always found particularly hard to deal with. And they got considerably worse as I headed into my forties. As did the fatigue from the cell depletion. Yup, all delightful.’
Of the moment she got her diagnosis, she adds: ‘I got off that Zoom call, pulled my laptop shut and sat there, still and aghast. So many emotions, I was shocked, but I also immediately felt a deep well of sadness and disappointment – for over three decades I’d KNOWN there was something wrong. I recalled all the times I’d told different doctors, ‘I feel toxic and poisoned, or, It’s like I have flu every day but I don’t have a temperature.’
‘(It’s amazing how the body can sometimes literally tell us what’s going on.) I felt anger rising at the times l’d been told I must have agoraphobia.
‘I would try and treat it as such, when, as it turned out, it was the lack of energy and the extreme light and sound sensitivity that made my body crash when going out to be in any kind of activity or stimulating environment.’
Miranda says she struggled to know how to share the news of her diagnosis with her followers, fearing she would be perceived as ‘complaining’ or ‘just tired all the time’.
Miranda Hart at the ‘Spy’ film premiere in London in 2015
But Lyme Disease was causing havoc for her body and she ended up with ‘endless diagnoses’. Also, fans soon noticed her absence from TV screens.
In 2017 it was revealed Miranda would not be returning to Call The Midwife, citing a busy work schedule as her reason.
But she later revealed during an stand-up gig in London that she had been suffering from ‘ill’ health.
She said at the time: ‘I don’t feel myself at the moment, because I was ill last year and I wasn’t able to exercise.’
Speaking out now, the comedian says doctors found she had battled Epstein-Barr, glandular fever, herpes, shingles and ‘other nasties I don’t care to remember for they all sounded so awful’.
Miranda describes suffering from chronic stress with viral infections and injuries being her primary stressor and ‘years of fear from misdiagnosis’.
Living in London and a high flying career added to the comedian’s ‘stress pot’ until it all became too much and she ‘eventually collapsed’.
She writes: ‘For years, I had been waking up with symptoms that I now see were being caused by a stress pot at a 9 out of 10, due to my undiagnosed Lyme and associated infections from immune system disorder.
‘Anything I then had to do that day would cause extreme fatigue. That’s why I eventually collapsed.’
Reflecting on the life-changing moment, Miranda says if she had learnt to remove stressors from her daily life, ‘my body could get back to some efficient functioning to recover’.
In a video promoting the book in August, she revealed she had been battling a secret illness which has caused her to ‘gain weight’ over the past few years.
Miranda told her fans she had been diagnosed with an ‘illness’ but did not disclose what she had been suffering from
The comedian said that she has ‘felt shame’ from gaining weight, not because she is striving for an ‘aesthetic ideal’ but because she doesn’t feel like herself.
In the video Miranda said she has worked hard to remove the negative feelings about her body.
The caption of the clip read: ‘I have found it incredibly hard not to feel shame from gaining weight over the last three years.
‘Not because of striving for an aesthetic ideal but because it doesn’t represent me and who I naturally am. But life happens. Illness happens.
‘And it’s a great way to keep focusing on the greatest healer – self-compassion. If I lose it or not I know I am loved. Peace out.’
The TV star, who was wearing a T-shirt which was branded with the word Proud, held up her book and joked she had ‘lost all of the midlife weight that was lumped on’.
She whispered ‘I haven’t, before pointing to the title of her new memoir.
Miranda continued: ‘But can I just say I’m actually really quite proud of the fact that I’ve dismantled quite a lot of shame about my weight gain, not that because I don’t think bigger is beautiful, but because it isn’t quite me and I feel really uncomfortable and it’s one of the things I talk about in there.’
Miranda’s fans flooded her comments section with messages of support after she candidly spoke about both her illness and weight gain.
They said: ‘Weight gain is horrendously misunderstood, and people can be terribly judgemental. Learning to accept yourself is a really good place to start. Looking forward to reading the book!’; ‘I’m in my 40s, and the last three years have been a nightmare for weight gain, no matter what I do. THANK YOU for being real on here’.
‘You have achieved all of these amazing things in life because of who you are, not because of what clothes size you are. You have a whole lot of love around you.’