Miriam Margolyes says the demand to stay in touch with friends and family amid the coronavirus pandemic is driving her "mental".
The 78-year-old actress is currently in isolation at her home in London - but Miriam admits her phone hasn\'t stopped ringing ever since she went into lockdown.
She shared: "I\'ve been keeping myself occupied by reading, watching TV, clearing the clutter and friends are phoning me at a great rate.
"The phone keeps ringing. People who\'ve never rung me on a landline before keep ringing. It drives me mental."
Miriam has also been using video chat in order to keep in touch with her loved ones.
However, the award-winning star confessed that it can be an "exhausting" process.
She told the Guardian newspaper: "I\'ve been doing a lot of zooming and skyping.
"I attended a shiva by Zoom - it was very moving. There were 63 people on the screen and they were able to share their memories of the lovely person who died.
"But you do feel exhausted by it all after a while. I am a gregarious, social kind of person - I like people and I like contact but I want to choose when I get contact and now I don\'t get to choose when I speak to people. I\'m going to turn off my phone."
Miriam also admitted to being shocked and disappointed by some peoples\' reaction to the pandemic.
She said: "What has astonished me is that [for some people] the economy is more important than people and we should come out of the lockdown and go back to normal.
"And they seem perfectly prepared to sacrifice old people. Old people have been described as not important to the economy and contributing nothing."
12 May 2020 - 5:00 PM
9 January 2020 - 1:00 PM
4 December 2019 - 1:00 PM
14 November 2019 - 2:00 PM
