At eleven years old, my nickname was Little Olga.
Jane Sanderson
The darling of Munich, Olga Korbut, had made a huge impression at the Olympics the year before. Inspired by her I joined the school gym team, wore my hair in Olga bunches, and learned how to do backflips and turn somersaults from a standing start. Proud to say I can still turn a perfect cartwheel.
My first car was a Riley Elf
Mustard yellow with a walnut dashboard. My dad found it advertised in the Barnsley Chronicle. But at its first annual service, the mechanic declared it ‘a death trap’; turns out the front and back had once belonged to two different Riley Elves, and my car was crudely soldered together down the middle. Dad never let me drive it again.
I fell in love with food in France, aged 19.
In 1980, I stayed for a while with a family in the south of France. They gave me Moules Marinieres, globe artichoke, snails in garlic butter … a series of new taste sensations which changed my life. Back home I produced a warm, smelly Camembert from my rucksack as a gift for my parents; it went straight in the bin.
I was a barmaid at Arthur Scargill’s local.
It was before the miners’ strike, but in 1982 the new NUM president was already at loggerheads with Margaret Thatcher’s government. Scargill used to order gin and tonic, which always struck me as too middle-class for a miners’ leader. Once, he came in with Vanessa Redgrave, who had a pint of bitter.
I’m an ardent fan of Midget Gems
But …. they must only be Lion’s; no other brand will do. They’re not very easy to find these days. I even love the black ones, which no one likes. The secret is to eat them with a green one. That was a top tip from my friend Guy, another true Midget Gem connoisseur: he was spot on.
I once shared a lift with Tom Hanks.
I was a Woman’s Hour producer, and he came to Broadcasting House to be interviewed. Someone had to meet him in reception and bring him up in the lift – and I just ran faster than the others.
I have a useless talent for remembering lyrics.
A friend once called me ‘lyric retentive’ which sounds like something that needs treating. But I have hundreds of songs trapped in my head. Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell and Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man are my party pieces.
My first creative writing for public consumption was a sixth-form panto.
I wrote it with my best friend Melanie. It was Snow White and the Seven Punks and we peppered it with what we called ‘Pythonesque’ humour. Turned out it wasn’t very funny.
When in doubt, I read Jane Austen.
She became my specialist subject as an English undergraduate, and every few years I read everything she wrote, all over again.
I can play the alto saxophone
That is, I learned how to play thirty years ago, but I’ve forgotten everything except the theme from The Pink Panther.
