Mel Giedroyc has opened up about missing her mum’s death in 2024 after her first night out in months.
The comedian and former The Great British Bake Off host, 58, was starring in the musical Starter for 10 at Bristol’s Old Vic at the same time her mum Rosemary, 86, was ill, and would regularly dash back to Oxford to see her after performances.
After a Saturday night show attended by her friends, she was convinced to stay behind at the theatre for some drinks – but had so much booze that she forgot to charge her phone, missing the call that alerted her to her mum’s deteriorating health.
“I'd been to see her on the Friday, all of us together,” she recalled on Elizabeth Day's How To Fail podcast, in which guests share their most regretful moments. “I had a show in the evening and I kissed her goodbye and told her I'd see her on Sunday.”
Giedroyc explained that her friends, knowing how stressed she’d been, lined up four alcoholic beverages, to which she told them: “Guys, I haven't been drinking the whole run – I've been going to see mum...”
However, her friends convinced her to let her hair down for one night. “They said, ‘You look stressed – get them down you!’ So I drank four Bacardi and Diet Cokes. Absolutely smashed. I was the last person to leave the theatre that night. They were literally trying to lock up, and I was in a bit of a state.”
After returning to her flat, Giedroyc failed to charge her phone “for the first time in two months” – and when she charged it in the morning, she received a stream of messages from her family, informing her of the news.
“I got back into the flat and sprawled in my clothes, stage make-up on, on the bed – you know, ridiculous immature behaviour. Woke up so hungover. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I've got to get down to see mum. Plugged my phone in and I could just hear in the bedroom, ding ding ding – like fifty messages. So I just knew. I knew that she died.”
Giedroyc added: “I got on a train and got to the place where she died in a nursing home. The whole family were there. Mum laid out.”
She said that her family mocked her, stating: “I had the piss ripped out of me right royally as I stepped into the room. There were a lot of tears, but there was also a degree of laughter, as well. And I think mum would have probably laughed. The only night I didn't have my phone charged. I just let rip that one night and, of course, that's the night that it all happened.”
Giedroyc played several characters in Starter for 10, an adaptation of David Nicholl’s 2003 book that was previously made into a film starring James McAvoy. In a four-star review, The Independent’s Isobel Lewis said her roles felt “fleshed out to demonstrate the breadth of her comic ability”, adding: “Giedroyc more than delivers on the laughs.”
