Courting Trouble
“Courting Trouble” is the first in a new series of satirical novels set in London’s first barrister/ solicitor, mother-daughter, two person, boutique feminist law firm, which only champions women’s cases and causes. Love, laughs, lust and litigation guaranteed!
Please tell us about your first success Puberty Blues.
Aged 18 I wrote a novel about the surfie boys I grew up with. These men disproved the theory of evolution – they were evolving into apes. They were the type of guys who thought ‘sex drive’ meant doing it in the car. Although I think I’ve worked out why. It’s because of that sign on the rear vision mirror which says “Objects in this mirror, may appear larger than they are.” It all suddenly makes sense, doesn’t it! We girls were little more than human handbags, draped attractively over boys’ arms. We were nothing more than a life support to a pair of breasts. The novel was a huge hit. It was then made into one of Australia’s highest grossing feature films by Bruce Beresford and has just been adapted into a hugely successful 20 hour mini-series. For a slim little volume, it packed a big punch.
How much has your background in scriptwriting and column writing helped you to write books?
Yes, writing sit com in Hollywood and humorous columns for newspapers and magazine has helped to hone my ability to zing out a one-liner, (I call it a black beltin tongue-fu, but basically I just write the way women talk when there’s no men around! It’s a great male myth that women aren’t funny. I think men only say this because they’re terrified what it is we’re being funny about! They presume we spend the whole time making jokes about the length of their members. Which is NOT true…as we also make jokes about the width, which, after childbirth is much, much more important!
You also write a blog, so please tell us about this.
Well, I only write because it’s cheaper than therapy! Being able to vent on issues that amuse or confuse me, is a great way of getting things off my wonder-bra-ed chest and of making friends with my wonderfully warm, wise and witty readers.
You have appeared on BBC and Sky news programmes so which has been your moat memorable experience?
Appearing on QI with my friend Stephen Fry was my tip top TV moment. I left school at 16. The only examination I’ve ever passed is my cervical smear test. I’m an autodidact – it means ‘self taught,” so, clearly it’s a word I taught myself! Consequently, sitting on that panel, plucking my highbrows with such an intellectual giant, was incredibly exciting.
You have 2 children so who do you juggle your writing with them?
Working Mums (surely a tautology?) juggle so much we should be in the Moscow State Circus. The Dunkirk evacuation would be easier than a working mum getting her kids up and out of the house in the morning. Men always say they’d like to help around the house only they can’t multi task. This is a biological cop out. Can you imagine any man having any trouble multi-tasking at say, an orgy?
I do think that any mother who finishes a novel should just win the Booker prize as it’s so much harder for us.
You are an ambassador for Women and Children first, Plan International, the White Ribbon and NAS, so can you tell us about your roles in all of these?
I support many women’s charities because it’s still a man’s world. 100 years since Emily Pankhurst tied herself to the railing and we still don’t have equal pay – we get 75 pence in the pound. Plus we’re getting concussion hitting our heads on the glass ceiling, plus we’re expected to clean it whilst we’re up there. And if things are tough for women in the West, imagine what it’s like for our less fortunate sisters in the developing world where women are fed last and fed least. Basically, any woman who says she’s a ‘post-feminist’, has kept her wonder bra and burnt her brains.
I support the National Autistic Society because I have a son on the autistic spectrum. I used the experiences in a novel called “The Boy Who Fell To Earth.” It’s a romantic comedy about a single mother raising a child with aspergers and trying to date again, with excruciating embarrassing consequences. What I hope the book reveals is that there is no such thing as normal or abnormal, just ordinary and extraordinary.
What is next for you?
Well, I’ve already started the second book in my legal series, and a TV company have just made me an offer to turn it into a series. A previous novel is also in the television pipeline. It’s called “To Love, Honour and Betray” and it’s a fish-out-of-water comedy about an English mum of two moving to a Sydney beach side suburb – just in time for her husband to dump her for her best friend. Lucy takes up surf life-saving – and has a lot of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with toy boys to get over it! It’s basically “Puberty Blues” from the mother’s point of view.
So, basically I’ll be driving around town with a casting couch strapped to my roof racks!
Tagged in Kathy Lette