Taming of the Tights
The Taming of the Tights, well I like to think its marv, and fab and also, and I think Bill Shakespeare would agree with me here...a work similar to, if not better than his own play 'The Taming of the Shrews.' That is what I like to think. Of course we will never know as Bill has left his tights behind many years ago.
Mostly it is the story of a girl Tallulah Casey who goes to a really useless performing arts college in the wilds of Yorkshire. The place is called 'Dother Hall' although the cynical locals call it 'Dither Hall'. Tallulah makes a little girl gang called 'The Tree sisters' and it is a story of girls together donning the golden slippers of the theatah dahling the theatah. But mostly it is about boys and snogging.
What is the appeal of writing for teens for you?
I can unleash my inner idiot. And go back to a time when I really did find it funny to get dressed up as a stuffed olive. or make a mono eyebrow out of fake fur and go to Ms Selfridge with my mates and act normally. But really it is because despite everything they the naughty teenage minxes, are so very loveable really.
You won the Queen of Teen award in 2008, so how did this make you feel as a writer?
Pretty damn good! It was the crown I liked mostly; I still wear it at home as I refused to give it back.
Actually the ceremony was a bit embarrassing, first of all because I was taken to the venue in a pink stretch limo and as we went through London blokes thought we were a hen party. Then all of the competitors had to make a speech seated on a throne, in true teenage fashion I hadn't given a thought to what I would do when I actually got to the ceremony. So I did a 'Well of course I was born for the throne' sort of ramble. But then I won it! I have never won anything in my life (apart from a Children’s Day Poetry certificate) so I was sooooo happy.
My mum came with me and said afterwards that after a quiet period of reverie and shock at my winning I reverted quickly back to my old ways and wore my crown everywhere. Even to the lavatory.
You attended Brighton University, so at what point in your educational life did you begin to write?
Ooooh well. I always wrote stuff when I was little. In fact when I was about 6 I wrote and drew a Street comic. About the families in my street on a council housing estate in Leeds. There was a very rough family at the end I think called the Toolsons and I did merry drawings of them with strap lines. Stuff like a picture of a brick coming through a window and the strap line would be 'Mr Toolson doesn't like his pie'
I was selling it outside our house when I felt a hand on my collar and it was my grandmother pulling me inside before there were fisticuffs.
But I wouldn't have thought that 'being a writer' was a job. No one in my family had even been to university.
I started 'properly' writing at Visual and Performing Arts College in my early 30's. My first show was called 'Stevie Wonder felt my face.'
Which he did. That won some prizes and was on BBC Channel 4.
You have also written comedy scripts, so how much are these scripts and the comedy in your books interchangeable?
Um. Well they are different, but I suppose the things that make me laugh are the same. I do notice what people do and remember. As a child of a poorish family all living in one house, and an Irish/Jewish household at that, I learned from an early age to 'do a turn'. In my case it was seared into my memory that on Friday night when the old drunks (er I mean my grandparents, aunties uncles and parents) came in and put the Irish records on, I would hear the dreaded; ‘Get the bairn up and dancing!!!!' and I would be dragged out of bed and put up on the dining room table to do Irish dancing.
My Uncle Eddie would teach me jokes to tell and ask me riddles like; ‘Should bald heads be buttered?'
Or weird Yorkshire jokes like;
'Don't send your grandma down the mines father, there's enough slack in her knickers!'
(slack for those of you fortunate enough not to have had the same upbringing as me, is a by-product of coal.)
Do you see? Do you get it?
No I don’t think I did either!
Please give us some insight into your previous publications for those who have not read your books yet?
Well the first book I wrote was called 'Angus thongs and full frontal snogging.'
I was asked to write it after a publisher saw an article I had written in the London Standard newspaper, about having to have my shoes surgically removed. You know, as sometimes happens after a night out...Anyway the publishers rang me and said they had read the article and really laughed, and asked if I would write a teenage girls diary. And I said 'Er why? I'm a grown up.'
They didn't agree, and said;' No you are not. We want you to do it because we have never read anything so childish and self-obsessed.'
And the rest is history
Well my history.
I wrote 10 books in the Georgia Nicolson series. The girl Georgia and her family is almost entirely based on me and my family. Although do my family thank me for this?
This new series about Tallulah is more about the Irish side of me combined with my actual time on The Performing arts course.
There is actually a bit taken directly from real life, when one of the tutors says to Tallulah after she has done a lunchtime performance, 'I never want to see you on stage again, it makes me feel physically sick.;
My dance tutor said that to me and look at me now.....not that I hold a grudge but...hahahahahahahahha!!!!!!
How did you react when you found out that your book Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging was going to be made into a film?
It took ages to get to production, nearly 10 years.'
In fact I had a bit of a nervy strop at first because, like most writers, I didn't have much to do with the script and whilst I was having the hump the shooting came to a street near me, in Brighton.
Alan Davies is one of my best friends and he was playing my father (vati..is what I used to call him, because I was learning German and vati is 'daddy' but actually its just funny because you pronounce it Farty...hours of fun for me) anyway...Alan texted me and said; ‘It’s your vati here, come round and see, I am wearing a ginger beard and very huge underpants.')
It was a lie but it made me go round.
They were shooting the (real) scene of when my dad went off to New Zealand and the family, mum, me my sister and my cat Angus were waving him goodbye. Well actually Angus was savaging his ankle but ..
Mum came along to see the scene being filmed and she was giving me the pep talk. You know; ‘Well this is just a film, it doesn’t matter, your books will last forever, and this is just a flash in the pan and..' Then she spotted the actress who was playing her who was very glamorous and she said;
'Well...that’s good casting!' And she loved the film after that.
How do you go about capturing the voice of a young protagonist so well?
I don't know really. I'm just me. I used to say a younger version of me, but I don't know if you ever get rid of your inner fool. Good job really, there is quite a lot to recommend it.
Who are your favourite reads?
I read everything. Private Eye, comics, horoscope books, thrillers...I love PD James, Ag Christie, Janet Evanovitch.
I love classics, I re read PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh...historical novels, self-help books. Currently I am reading;
Worrals on the warpath by Capt W.E. Johns (Worrals was the female equivalent of Biggles and had a sidekick called 'Frecks') To the Nines by Janet Evanovitch and Fat, Bald and Worthless by Robert Easton (stories about noble nicknames and fair funny).
What is next for you?
Well more writing because that’s what I do. But....I am also going to be doing netball training. My nieces are top netball players, Libby in fact is in the under 18s England squad and I am infiltrating stealthily. I was in my school team and good and loved it. I think team sports are the way forward for girls. Anyway I started playing again a few years ago and unfortunately got marked by a girl who reminded me of Wet Lindsay at school. I hated Wet Lindsay and she as sure as eggs hated me. This Wet Lindsay was about a third of my age but I was determined to pay her back for the past (which to be fair this Wet Lindsay hadn't been in). Anyway my team did win, but I injured my knee so badly I had to be on a stick for three months. So this time in my bid to be the unacceptable face of second age netball I am doing training with an England coach. Me and my mate Jo Good are pounding up and down Regents Park near the Honest Sausage cafe, shouting and side stepping and wearing shorts and bibs even as I type.
Which isn’t easy.
Wish me luck.
And who knows, the Queen of teen crown might not be the only crown I win for my country.......
Tagged in Harper Collins