The television adaptation of writer-actress Meera Syal's novel Life Isn't All Ha Ha, Hee Hee will be screened in May. Syal, who has Indian parents and was awarded an MBE in 1997, will play a depressed, self-harming wife in it.

She says she was inspired to write her second novel (which came out in 1999) after seeing two headlines in an Asian newspaper. "One was: 'British Asian women top UK graduate league'. Next to it was a story about British Asian women being the most likely to self-harm and commit suicide," she says. "The two are connected."

Syal, who won the 'Media Personality of the Year' award at the Commission for Racial Equality's annual Race in the Media awards in 2000, says, "When you're trying that hard, something has to give."

Syal was born in 1963 near Wolverhampton in the West Midlands and was educated at Manchester University where she studied English and Drama. She co-wrote the script for My Sister Wife, a three-part BBC Television series, and wrote the script, Bhaji On The Beach for Channel 4.

At 43, Syal, who married Sanjeev Bhaskar, her co-star from the BBC comedy-meets-chat show The Kumars At No 42 in January, describes her progress so far as a "long, hard, slog."

There will be lots of Syal on the small screen in the coming months. Another series of The Kumars at No 42 is scheduled and in the summer, we'll see her playing Joyti De-Laurey, the Goldman Sachs PA who stole 4.4 million pounds from her employers, The Daily Telegraph reported today.

Syal joined the Royal Court Theatre straight after graduating with a first class degree in English and Drama from Manchester University. She had already won a National Student Drama Award and was later named Most Promising Performer at the Edinburgh Festival. Her breakthrough came when she teamed up with friends from the Asian comedy circuit -- Bhaskar included -- to write and perform in the hit sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, which transferred from radio to television in 1996.

She later wrote the musical Bombay Dreams with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Her semi-autobiographical novel Anita And Me won a Betty Trask award and became a critically acclaimed film.