Miriam Margolyes

While at Cambridge, she performed with the Footlights, appeared on the first series of University Challenge, and regaled her Newnham friends with stories like this, which she retells in her 2023 memoir Oh Miriam!

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“At Cambridge I lived in a securely female world (my college, Newnham, did not admit men, and still doesn't, surrounded by wonderful women of great beauty, intelligence and sensitivity. My friends provided all the deep emotional sustenance I needed but they seemed so affected by men: I couldn't understand why. The joy for me was that you didn't need to engage intellectually with these simple creatures. For me men were always more of an impulse-buy, a source of instant gratification, not to be taken seriously.

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As I cycled down King's Parade one day in the 1960s, my eye was taken by a handsome young GI in a nearby open-topped car. He had boy-next-door looks: glossy blond hair, bright blue eyes and those amazing American teeth. He must have been stationed at the nearby Alconbury base. I pulled up alongside him at a traffic light, smiled, and said: If you follow me to my college, I'll suck you off. I knew that good manners required a girl to say clearly what was on offer. He accepted with surprised delight, went off to park his car and then we met up again at the Porters' Lodge. We walked in pleasant silence up the stairs to my room.

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The actual encounter was decorous rather than passionate. He was clean and I was expert and there was little casual conversation before battle was joined (well, hardly battle, but you know what I mean). I asked him where he came from and he replied politely, 'Texas, ma'am? He told me about his brothers and sisters, I explained I was an only child and then out popped his member and we were off! The real joy for me was telling my friends about it the next morning in every ridiculous detail. And they were in convulsions.

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I've always found it odd that no one talks about it. You might think from the deafening silence that I was the only girl sucking men off in Cambridge in the 1960s - I was not. I'm just the only one prepared to talk about it. My parents had laid it on very thick, 'You mustn't sleep with anybody because you will get pregnant and it will be a shocking thing and it'll make us terribly sad and it'll be horrible and you mustn't do it.' And I thought, 'Right, well, I mustn't do that? Penis entry was out of bounds. But when you're young, it's absolutely natural that you are moist. You have feelings. The sap is rising. Your clitoris swells and all those physiological things happen, and if you can't sleep with somebody you have to do something else. As a good Jewish girl, it seemed clear that I should suck and not fuck. So that's what I did. I knew Mummy would've been very shocked. But that's how it started - there were various knobs bobbing around in my adolescence - I was fairly proficient by the time I went up to Cambridge and I continued with it until well into my twenties.

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I didn't know I was a lesbian then: I just thought I hadn't met the right man yet. I found men slightly ridiculous, but their phallic inability to hide excitement was rather touching, and being desired was thrilling in its own way. I've always loved an appreciative audience.

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And an upstanding ovation!

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I've never consulted a rabbinical authority on what is proper for Jewish girls. And it's too late now!”