The Streepers’ treat - February 13: As I’m briefing the Ministers, Foggie, our third assistant, appears: ‘I think you’d better look out of the window.’
Under a lamppost, drenched in the rain, are the Streepers. I march back to the set. I can’t be dealing with this. Foggie asks if I’m going to let them in. I charge past him, run outside and hustle the girls up the stone steps of the Town Hall. They look like bedraggled waifs. Meryl agrees to meet them and as she shakes their hands, one begins to cry. They tell her they came down from Derby to London two days ago to watch a special screening of a film she’d narrated about female genital mutilation.