Martina Cole

Martina Cole0:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:50

My castaway to day is the novelist Martina Cole. They call her the queen of crime, and that's just the way she likes it. With over sixteen million books sold, she's carved out a comfortable position at the very top of the bestseller list, with stories of family, revenge, gangsters, and gore fairy tales they are not.

Presenter1:11

Which is odd, because parts of her own life story make Cinderella's seem a touch lame. Expelled from her convent school for reading racy novels, she was pregnant by eighteen, working at, among other things, as a cleaner, a shelf-stacker, to try to make ends meet. They often didn't. In the early nineties, she posted off the manuscript of her first book to an arbitrary agent, who called just three days later to tell her she would be a star. He was right. Her first novel was sold for a record sum, made it to number four in the best-seller list, and was turned into a T V drama. She's pretty much written a hit book every year since. She says, I do like my characters, but a couple of times I've thought, you are doing my head in, you've got to go. I've always said I have the best job in the world. I'm with people I want to be with all day, and if they get on my nerves, I can kill them. It's perfect.

Martina Cole2:01

Hmm.

Presenter2:02

Welcome, Martinico. It's very nice to have you here. And what's your favorite way of killing a character if they have to go?

Martina Cole2:04

Thank you.

Martina Cole2:07

I think it depends who they are and what they've done to annoy me. Oftentimes with my characters, you know, I know that they're going to die at some point in the book. It's just I have to make up my mind which will be the best demise really.

Presenter2:19

You have to when you're writing uh the very gory, violent scenes, do you have to steal yourself to do it? Do you have a technique for doing it? Yeah, sometimes I have to have a large whisky, to be honest.

Martina Cole2:28

Yeah, I do, yeah. I remember when I was writing George Markham, The Serial Killer, in my second book.

Presenter2:28

Did you

Martina Cole2:34

It was very difficult killing those women because they hadn't done anything wrong. And it had always grieved me that that everyone knows the name of a serial killer, but you very rarely know the name of the victims, you know, it's some kind of famous sort of thing.

Speaker 12:44

Yeah, it's something.

Martina Cole2:47

So I wanted people to remember my women.

Martina Cole2:49

And it was really, really difficult killing them.

Martina Cole2:52

But it's like anything else, you know, you once you start it, you have to finish it. So I I I quite enjoy killing people. I know that sounds terrible, but it it has to be done and I like to do it in it in a good way.

Presenter3:03

How disciplined are you as a writer? What's your do you have

Martina Cole3:06

Structure.

Presenter3:06

Uh

Martina Cole3:06

My publishers have been listening, so I should say yes. I just work all night. I find it's best for me the night. I love the night. I've always had trouble sleeping. I've never been a great sleeper.

Presenter3:09

No, but tell us the truth.

Martina Cole3:17

Ten at night when everybody else is getting ready to, you know, watch something or read something, get ready, I start getting ready to work and I can work to eight or nine in the morning. I've worked for twenty hours before an hour stretch. I'm always playing music. Whatever era I'm writing in is what music that I play.

Presenter3:33

Oh, so what you if you're writing as you as you have done set in the nineteen fifties, you'll listen to music of a period.

Martina Cole3:37

Yeah, I listen to the fifties and if I'm in the forties I listen to Glen Miller. I love Glyn Miller. I love the big band sounds. There really isn't much music that I don't like, to be honest.

Presenter3:46

In that case, tell us about your first on the list today. What what are we going to hear?

Martina Cole3:50

Life on Mars, David Bowie. I was always a big Bowie fanatic all my life. I bought The World of David Bowie when I was 10. And then a few years later, when this came out,

Martina Cole3:59

Life on Mars, I felt like he'd written it for me. And my mum and dad were quite ol a lot older when I was born than my buttons.

Presenter4:06

They were in the f equals.

Martina Cole4:08

Not well in our fories, yeah.

Presenter4:08

Yeah.

Martina Cole4:09

And my dad was a seaman, so it sort of

Martina Cole4:12

But then Bowie's music as always I've always absolutely adored him, so it's natural I think.

Martina Cole4:17

That this would be my first song.

Presenter4:20

fighting in the dance hall. Oh man, look at those gay men go.

Presenter4:30

It's the creaky shall

Presenter4:34

Take a look at her, oh ma'am, meaning up the wrong guy, oh ma'am, wonder if you'll ever know.

Presenter4:45

We send that The big shallow

Martina Cole4:49

Is their life on Mars?

Presenter4:54

That was David Bowie and Life on Mars. Martina Cole, when you're in the middle of writing, I know you are yourself a voracious reader.

Presenter5:02

Are you reading books while you're writing?

Martina Cole5:04

Some books? Oh god, yeah. I could I couldn't imagine in any way, shape or form like having a book.

Martina Cole5:09

And I read so many books. I can read four to five books a week. And this is the truth. Yeah, I've got a house out in Northern Cyprus, Turkish Cyprus, and I I can read two books a day there and I often do. If I go in somebody's house and I don't see any books, I'm so sorry for them.

Presenter5:24

Crime as a genre, of course, is inevitably bleak and dark in parts. What do you think it is in us, the readers, that is so attracted to sort of the worst of life?

Martina Cole5:32

So some of the worst

Martina Cole5:34

I think the thing that we're most afraid of is our biggest, biggest sort of entertainment now, you know, is murder and death. Unfortunately, it's true. So it's the fun.

Presenter5:42

So it's confronting the things we're afraid of.

Martina Cole5:43

I think it is a part of that is confronting the things that we're afraid of. But also, I think people like to try and work out who did it. I think you read different books for different reasons. I think a lot of people.

Martina Cole5:54

Read mysteries because they want to solve the mystery, or they like to, you know, they want to be entertained, it's a puzzle, they want to be entertained.

Speaker 15:57

There was a bit of a

Martina Cole6:00

I like to see how things progress. The big part of the book for me is is as it all opens up, everything starts to open up and all the layers come away. Let's have some more music, Martinico. Tell me about this second track. Well, this is After the Gold Rush, Neil Young. It's always been one of my favorite tracks. I listen to this at least once or twice a week, funnily enough.

Martina Cole6:20

I loved this album. This album always reminds me of when I was very young I first heard it. I can remember hearing it and I'm being just so blown away by this track. And also I used to roll a joint on this. That probably sounds really terrible, does it? In my bedroom. It was one of my albums I used to roll a joint on, yeah. My mum used to accuse me of she used to say to me, you smoking them funny fags? which was Irish and I told her they were herbal cigarettes from the chemist.

Presenter6:45

Well I dreamed I saw the Knights in armour Come and saying something about a Queen.

Presenter6:56

There were peasants singing, and drummers drumming, and the archers split the tree.

Presenter7:06

There was a fanfare blowing to the sun that was floating on the breeze

Presenter7:19

That was Neil Young and after the Gold Rush. So we've heard just a a little bit about the detail of your upbringing, Martina Cole. Let's find out a little bit more. You were brought up then the youngest of five kids.

Martina Cole7:32

Yeah.

Presenter7:32

Irish Catholic parents.

Martina Cole7:34

Yeah, I had pretty much an Irish upbringing really. We didn't really know anyone who wasn't. This was in Essex. Yeah, we didn't really well mum and dad had come out in the slum clearance. We had we didn't really know anyone who wasn't Irish till we went to school really, you know, we all we all sort of had Irish accents.

Presenter7:34

Whatever

Presenter7:37

This was an essay.

Presenter7:48

And your dad was away for long stretches of time'cause he was a merchant seaman.

Martina Cole7:50

Just a tiny

Martina Cole7:51

Yeah, you see it was on the ACT boats and all the Blue Star lines.

Presenter7:54

Great.

Martina Cole7:55

So he would go all the way to Australia, New Zealand, all the way up around the top of the world, come back through South America.

Presenter7:55

Yeah.

Presenter8:00

The

Martina Cole8:01

So he was away for a long, long time. Oh, long, long time. Sometimes we'd forget him. We were used to him not being there. I get it. And then all through the time I'd had at sea, my mum used to threaten us with when my dad came home. When your father comes home when your father comes home, I'd tell him

Presenter8:02

Oh stretches.

Martina Cole8:14

And then of course when he was coming home she'd say, Don't tell him because she didn't want to ruin his coming home and he would turn up in the middle of the night and do you remember that black cap noise? I used to hear it coming and I'd

Speaker 18:23

Still hear it.

Martina Cole8:25

Dink is my dad.

Martina Cole8:26

And he would come in the house and he would throw all his money up in the air. He had boxes of chocolates, we had presents.

Martina Cole8:33

It was just

Martina Cole8:35

Fantastic. That's giddying, isn't it? As a child, you must just and of course now as an adult I realized my poor mum had to put us all back down on it. He'd go, No one's gonna score tomorrow, Eileen, and we'd all go to the pictures in the West End and we'd all do stuff and

Presenter8:35

That's good.

Martina Cole8:48

It was just amazing. It was just it's it was huge.

Martina Cole8:51

You could climb him like a tree. He was a huge, great big man. He was always laughing. He always had sense of humour. But of course I realized now as an adult that my poor mum had to

Martina Cole9:01

get the money off him. He wasn't what you'd call what he had, he spent. Right. You know, he's to bring the whole pub back on a Saturday night and was he a boozer? Was he? Oh, he loved it, yeah, and parties, loved parties. My mum's twin tub washing machine actually went down in the middle from all the barrels of beer.

Presenter9:05

Yeah.

Martina Cole9:15

I'm sorry.

Martina Cole9:16

We just loved him. We were like, Oh, that's home, you know, and he'd come in and it and of course it wasn't until I was an adult I thought, God, how did my poor mum stand him? And she worked, she was a psychiatric nurse and she worked nights. And when I think back now, how hard she did work, and she died when I was very young, and I wished I could sit her down and go, Oh, mum, I'm so sorry. And I used to go over to the park and just read all day and all night.

Martina Cole9:39

I had no interest in school. I used to go to school sometimes, if there was something particularly interesting going on, I'd go. All my friends just go, I can't believe you, Tenny, you you haven't been to school for weeks. I'd go, No.

Presenter9:49

So much more to come, Martina. Let's fit in some more music, though, for now.

Martina Cole9:52

But

Presenter9:52

Uh

Martina Cole9:52

Galway Bay, My Nania Lochlin, this was always her song.

Martina Cole9:57

I absolutely worshipped the ground she walked on. She was just such a fantastic woman. She came for the weekend, stayed for eleven years. She helped look after us children.

Martina Cole10:07

She used to do her stockings with a shilling. W with a suspender belt on the side. Yeah, yeah, she's like when she used to go to mass she used to get so dressed up. One of my earliest memories is sitting on her lap and I smelling her perfume.

Presenter10:10

She's nice.

Presenter10:19

What did she wear?

Martina Cole10:20

Four seven eleven, obviously. Oh, yeah. She was a big four seven eleven girl.

Presenter10:21

Oh yes.

Martina Cole10:24

But I just used to love being with her.

Presenter10:27

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland

Presenter10:36

Then maybe at the closing of your day

Presenter10:43

You will sit and watch the moon rise over Clara

Martina Cole10:46

From rise over cloud

Presenter10:51

And see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

Presenter10:59

Just to hear

Presenter11:01

That was Ruby Murray and Galway Bay for memories you said, Martina Cole, just as you were introducing that piece of music of your grandmother, who was very, very dear to you indeed. I was going to ask you about what impact, long-term impact, your Catholic schooling had upon you, but you said you weren't really there very much, so maybe

Martina Cole11:16

I was at the Catholic school. It was just when I got older. I wasn't at Catholic school. I got expelled from the convent. What for? I was reading The Betsy, Harold Robbins. Crazy stuff. Yeah, I remember my mum going up the school and the nun saying, you know, she was reading this book. And my mum said, well, I'm a married woman with five children and I don't know what that book's about.

Martina Cole11:37

Insinuating you're a nun, how do you know what the fuck's about? And it all sort of deteriorated after that, and then I left. Yeah.

Presenter11:43

Yeah.

Martina Cole11:43

You said

Presenter11:43

Um that your mum was a a strong character, she had to be, she'd five kids to bring up, your dad was away for long stretches of time. What else should I know of

Martina Cole11:49

Long stretch

Martina Cole11:52

Basa. She was really kind. She'd come across as very brusque at times, and I think I sort of deliberately took that on board for me, you know, and I was like, oh, you're so horrible to me. I was thought she was so horrible. You know, hindsight's a wonderful thing, isn't it? I realized that she was trying to set me on the right path. When I was having my son, when I was 18, she was devastated. You know, it was still terrible to, you know, have a baby. And yet, I can remember one of the neighbours, she said to me, I don't know how you can walk out of the house like that. And I said, well, I put one foot in front of the other when you're pregnant.

Presenter12:21

Meaning like that.

Speaker 112:22

Yeah.

Martina Cole12:23

And I said, well, I put one foot in front of the other, love, how do you go? Your house, and my mum, a wedding, she went to me, you'll do.

Speaker 112:26

Yeah.

Martina Cole12:29

But she would defend you to the death, and she would be the first person to point out where you were going wrong. Does that make sense? It does make sense. She'd be the first person and she'd...

Speaker 112:30

Through

Presenter12:35

It does make

Martina Cole12:38

Didn't just point it out, she did sort of go on about it. We used to call her the old drag on, because she used to drag on and on and on.

Martina Cole12:44

But, you know, I was so young and

Martina Cole12:47

And I wanted my child. I wanted him desperately. He was forty last week.

Martina Cole12:52

And you know, it's really funny because a an old friend of mine that I went to school with, she said to me a while ago, I s I envied you so much, Tina,'cause she didn't keep her baby.

Martina Cole13:01

And she said, I envied you so much because I used to see you everywhere. Your experience in that.

Presenter13:05

1978, and at the age of 18, giving birth to your first child. What went on between you and your mother? Did she give you help?

Martina Cole13:08

Yeah.

Martina Cole13:12

Did she give you hell? She gave me hell all the way through it, yeah. My mum delivered him in the end. And, um

Martina Cole13:19

It was just amazing to to have her there. She fell madly in love with him. She absolutely adored my son.

Martina Cole13:25

Let's have some more music, Martina Cole. Well, this is which we'll hear, Pink Floyd, which is.

Martina Cole13:31

I know this isn't what people will always see as a very happy song, but for me it's always been a red letter day song. And when I had my first book published, I was this was playing when I had the phone call.

Martina Cole13:41

for my agent to say to me, you know, headline have made the preemptive bid, this was playing. It's always simp to play in the big time to my life. So whenever I hear this, it always brings back happy memories.

Speaker 313:53

Slow

Speaker 313:54

So you think he could tell?

Speaker 314:00

Uh

Presenter14:00

Heavens and hell!

Presenter14:03

Blue skies and pain

Presenter14:07

Can you tell a green field?

Presenter14:12

On the Coal Steel Rail

Presenter14:16

A smile from a veil

Presenter14:20

Do you think you can tell?

Presenter14:25

That was Pink Floyd and Wish You Were Here. Martinico, when had you started writing? I mean, were you did you write in school?

Martina Cole14:30

Yeah, I was always writing. I wrote my first book, I think, was when I was about...

Presenter14:31

Another

Martina Cole14:35

Thirteen, I think. I'd written stuff when I was younger, but not, you know, sort of long stories and things. I wrote this book about this girl who went to a convent school but actually worked for the CIA in between times. I I think all my women were always going to be strong characters. Were you showing it to people? Did people know why?

Presenter14:49

Yeah.

Martina Cole14:51

When I wrote Dangerous Lady, only one person ever saw it, and that was a friend of mine, Jackie. She used to commute into London.

Martina Cole14:59

And she used to come to dinner with me every Wednesday on my friend, you know,'cause I'd known the house, obviously,'cause I had the baby and everything. And, um, I used to cook dinner and Jackie used to take whatever chapters I'd done in to work with her and she used to go to me, Oh, it's really good

Presenter15:11

You were writing in your that was in your early twenties. You'd

Martina Cole15:13

And it was sort of

Presenter15:13

Good luck.

Martina Cole15:16

She was like, oh, Tina, this is really good. You know, if I bought this in a shop, but I thought, no, I shouldn't sign up because I'm a friend.

Presenter15:22

And

Martina Cole15:22

Uh

Presenter15:22

So those years then, when, as we know, you had your first child when you were eighteen, I I saw that you were married when you were very, very young for a very short time.

Martina Cole15:29

For a very short time.

Presenter15:30

Yeah.

Martina Cole15:31

Very short time. Let's just say, oh.

Martina Cole15:34

I liked men, but I couldn't eat a whole one.

Martina Cole15:38

They don't mean me and me in long relationships don't mean I I'm much better off if he lives in his house and I live in mine.

Presenter15:43

And your daughter would come along twenty years after your son.

Martina Cole15:45

Oh yeah, I've got twenty years and I never married any of my children's fathers either.

Presenter15:50

But you've been married twice. Yeah.

Martina Cole15:51

Better.

Presenter15:51

Yeah, but we know about the can't eat a whole one, so we'll check. So your parents both passed away when you were in your early twenties. Given how much supportive they were in your life, that must have been a huge.

Martina Cole15:53

Yeah.

Speaker 115:59

Yeah.

Martina Cole15:59

Type.

Martina Cole16:01

That must have been a huge blow. My mum babysat for me, you know, so that I could work. I worked full time. She was wonderful as well. And it was odd because my dad died and we really wasn't expecting it. And

Martina Cole16:13

He was riddled with kents and we didn't know nobody was expecting it. And then a couple of days after the funeral, my mum said, I'm going to bed, I'm tired, and she just never got up.

Martina Cole16:22

And we all tried, you know, my brothers and sisters, we tried to get to eat, we tried to

Martina Cole16:27

She just didn't. And eight months, one day later, we buried her. And it was really strange because as I was looking in the grave, you could see my dad's coffin and it was still look brand new. You know, they'd tidied it up. It was it was just so sad. It's just really sad.

Martina Cole16:43

And I felt bereft because suddenly I didn't realise how much I needed them.

Martina Cole16:48

It also made me a very a much stronger person because I had nobody else but me to rely on. Tell me if you would, Martina, about your next choice. What are we going to hear? Why is it on the list? Michael Jackson, Ain't No Sunshine. It's Bill Withers sung the song technically, I think, a lot better, but this song means a lot to me because again, going back to my poor mum, the hospital rung me, they said you've got to come to the hospital.

Martina Cole17:11

And the Bill Withers version was on the radio, Ain't No Sunshine, as I was getting ready and I rang a taxi.

Martina Cole17:19

And as I got in the taxi,

Martina Cole17:22

and got to the end of the road, the Michael Jackson version came on in the taxi and I just heard it twice in ten minutes and of course it I was going to s I knew my mum was dead before I got there, so

Martina Cole17:33

It's always been a Miniamotus song.

Presenter17:36

Ain't no sunshine when she is gone

Presenter17:41

It's not warm when she waits

Presenter17:49

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone And she's always gone too long Any time she goes away

Presenter18:01

Doth this time was in gone

Presenter18:10

That was Michael Jackson and Ains Sunshine. Martina Cole, multi-million selling author. You nearly threw your first book out, the manuscript for it. What you were clean you were clearing out some boxes, where you were clearing out drawers.

Martina Cole18:22

Then I was always moving. I was and I had this whole sort of.

Martina Cole18:28

A whole room basically, a great big cupboard full of manuscripts and things that I'd written, comedy series, I'd written all sorts.

Martina Cole18:35

And I thought, oh, I'll just just burn it, you know, and get rid of it.

Martina Cole18:39

And then I took out the manuscript of Dangerous Lady and I had a glass of wine funny enough I was sitting down and I started reading it.

Martina Cole18:46

And it was like 10 years after I'd written it. And suddenly I thought, God, that's not bad.

Presenter18:51

So you'd written it in your very early twenties.

Martina Cole18:52

Yeah.

Presenter18:52

But this

Martina Cole18:53

It's time you were 30. Yeah, yeah. And I think for the first time ever, I thought, yeah, you could do this, you know, you might be able to do this. And I got the Writers Night Shear book and I rung up Darlie Anderson, lovely Darlie, he's still my agent. And why did you ring him up? Darlie Anderson. I thought he was a woman and obviously it was in the first, you know, in the 80s. But I thought, oh, Darlie Anderson. And I run up this number in London and this voice went hello and he sounded like Wilfrid Hyde White and I was terrified.

Martina Cole19:20

I said, oh, my name's Martina Cole, and I've written a book. And he said, well, what's the book about?

Martina Cole19:25

And I told him, I said, Oh, it's about this girl, you know, who's in this gangland family and everything. He said, Well, women don't write books like that, but send it to me'cause I'm intrigued. And I sent it off that night. I just caught the post and

Martina Cole19:37

And Darlie wrung me on the Monday night and said, You are going to be a star. He really did say that. Yeah, he did. And I thought it was my brother Tony trying to wind me up. And I was going, really? You know, and then suddenly I realized it was him. I was like, oh my God.

Presenter19:42

He really did say that.

Martina Cole19:50

And I was going, oh, thank you. Thank you. And my husband, I live with my husband. He said to me, who are you calling Darling? I said, no, his name's Darlie. He was just all mad. And he said to me, basically, you've got to rewrite the book. This has got to be done. Because Maura died in the original book. And he said, Maura can't die at Fenn Farm and she's got to stay alive. So I took it all on board. And I always say this, you know, when I do writers' conferences, but the prisons anyway.

Presenter20:03

And that's it.

Speaker 120:04

Uh

Speaker 120:04

I

Martina Cole20:11

Listen to what people tell you. If they know their job, listen. You know, listen to what they've got to say.

Presenter20:17

So you listened and you did a little bit of rejigging, a little bit of tweaking, a little bit of rewriting. 10 years, I had to bring it up 10 years. Now, this is very unusual indeed. Your first book went to auction to find out which publisher was going to get it, and at the time you set a record for an unpublished author of securing an advance of £150,000. Is that right? I believe it was in the early 90s, yeah. How did you celebrate it?

Martina Cole20:19

On the

Martina Cole20:20

With a tweaky little bit of rewriting.

Martina Cole20:24

Yeah.

Speaker 120:24

Yeah.

Speaker 120:27

And that would

Speaker 120:31

Um

Speaker 120:32

But

Martina Cole20:38

It's when you'd secured that advance.

Martina Cole20:40

Well, that's a strange thing because, you know, I wish you were here. I've just been listening to that. I went, Oh my God And my poor son come in from school and he thought someone had died because I was crying in the kitchen and he was going, Mum, what's the matter? What's happened? And I'm going, I'm so happy.

Martina Cole20:55

The average, you know, sort of

Martina Cole20:57

Advances £3,000. So I'd be doing my Hoover, you know. Imagine I got £3,000, you know, and what I'd do with it.

Martina Cole21:05

And suddenly there there was just this huge amount of money in front of me and it was and it

Martina Cole21:09

The euphoria went to terror and I was frightened because it was just so much money and I

Martina Cole21:14

And I knew I was on the on the edge of something and it was a bit frightening, I think.

Presenter21:19

In the beginning, not now, because I see you're wearing beautiful jewelry, you've got fabulous shoes on, you know, the diamonds are sparkling this morning, but at the time.

Presenter21:27

Did you find it actually difficult to spend the money? Did it feel like yours?

Martina Cole21:30

I feel like you

Martina Cole21:31

It was hard, yeah, and

Martina Cole21:34

I remember buying a car and I'd I'd I went and bought a brand new BMW car and it was just such a great feeling. I'd never been in that position to do anything like that for myself before. You know, it's

Martina Cole21:45

And I'm pretty good with money'cause I've had to be.

Martina Cole21:48

So it was really nice to be able to splash out, I suppose, and not have to worry about it. And when the car arrived, I went to bed, I got up about two o'clock in the morning and I went down and sat in the car.

Presenter21:59

And that smell of independent.

Martina Cole21:59

Yeah, that's a new dominant that new cosmo.

Martina Cole22:03

And so I was like, who's going to buy my book? And I remember going in W. H. Smith's and there I was with Catherine Cooks and Jilly Cooper, all these big names. And I thought, who's going to want my book?

Martina Cole22:15

And of course

Presenter22:15

We went in at number four. Time for some more music, Martinico. What a tale that is.

Presenter22:20

We're gonna hear your sixth.

Martina Cole22:22

Right, we've got George On My Mind by Ray Charles because it's a wonderful song that always

Martina Cole22:28

brings back fabulous memories for me. I I spend a lot of time in the Deep South as much as I can and I love Georgia. And it just brings back growing up, listening to my mum was a big Ray Charles. I'm a big Ray Charles fanatic.

Martina Cole22:41

And it's just a wonderful track and it always makes me happy.

Speaker 122:45

Georgia

Speaker 122:49

Georgia

Speaker 122:53

The holy

Presenter22:58

Just an old sweet song

Presenter23:04

Keep charging

Martina Cole23:05

On remote I'm Georgia on time.

Martina Cole23:13

Austin, Georgia.

Martina Cole23:18

Georgia

Martina Cole23:23

But some of you

Martina Cole23:28

Comes as sweet and clear.

Martina Cole23:34

Online. Through the past

Presenter23:35

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter23:40

That was Ray Charles and Georgia on my mind. To your friends, once you started to be extremely successful, which you did very quickly when you started to be published, how did that fit in with the people you knew? Because you know you were starting to sort of write about them.

Martina Cole23:56

I'm not sure.

Presenter23:56

Yeah.

Presenter23:57

Yeah.

Martina Cole23:57

Except I was banned tax. But all that aside, funny things is do you know it's funny, but I've still got every friend I had at school all these years later.

Martina Cole24:07

And I live a lot of the the year, if I can, out in Northern Cyprus. I have a house there, I have shops there, I've got bookshops. I always wanted bookshops and I I opened them in Northern Cyprus.

Martina Cole24:18

And we were all around my pool.

Martina Cole24:20

There was about seven of eight of us from school and we'd been best friends since we were eleven.

Martina Cole24:26

And who'd have thought all those years ago that we would all end up sitting all together still forty years on?

Presenter24:33

Your book sales are um well delightful. Sixteen million copies and rising. Do do you have friends who are authors or d is it are they're not jealous of your

Martina Cole24:42

Are they yeah, they're not jealous of you

Presenter24:43

Yeah.

Martina Cole24:43

No, I've met some wonderful authors over the years and stayed friend you know, became friends and stayed friends with a lot of authors. I think authors are pretty good, especially crime authors. Crime authors watch watch each other's back really.

Martina Cole24:57

It's the romantic novelists that stab each other in about the job. But it's well I'm not a big chitnic or romantic. I've never really read any sort of romantic stuff. I don't really like it. But I think authors are a I think we're a good breed. We do tend to look after each other. Is it true that your books are borrowed a lot in prison libraries? They're most borrowed.

Presenter25:14

And then those

Speaker 125:15

Yeah.

Martina Cole25:15

When I go into the prisons, when I do the prison workshops, some people only ever start reading when they go to prison. A lot of the young men especially have such a they can't even write their own name, a lot of them. So it's good to see the prison workshops. Do you you go into prisons, do you? Oh yeah, I go into prisons all the time. I've been doing it for well over twenty years. And what do you talk to them about?

Presenter25:28

Do you you go into

Martina Cole25:34

I divide in classes. I don't talk to them about their lives or anything to do with them. People often say, Oh, you must get so many ideas. I've never discussed their lives with them. And also I don't want to know what they've done because once you know what someone's done, it can change your opinion, even if you don't want it to.

Martina Cole25:50

So I go in and do writing classes and

Martina Cole25:52

I type them for how to do characters, how to structure a book, how to structure a character, etc. Let's have some more music then, Marsha.

Presenter25:58

Is it then Martina?

Martina Cole25:59

We're gonna hear your seventh.

Martina Cole26:00

Who is it, and why is it on your list?

Martina Cole26:03

Well, it's summertime, Billy Holiday. This is my daughter's record really, for me and my daughter. We both big Billy Holiday fanatics. And when she was small, I used to play this when I was feeding her, until she fell asleep.

Martina Cole26:19

I'm the living in Jesus.

Martina Cole26:24

Be sure

Presenter26:25

A jump in

Presenter26:28

And the cotton is high.

Presenter26:34

Oh, your dad is rich.

Presenter26:38

And your ma is good looking.

Presenter26:43

So harsh little baby, don't you cry.

Presenter26:53

One lovely morning

Presenter26:57

You going to rise up singing

Presenter27:02

And you'll spread your wings.

Presenter27:07

And you'll take

Presenter27:12

What till that morning?

Presenter27:16

There's nothing can harm me.

Presenter27:21

That was Billie Holiday and summertime. Martina Cole, you've had two children, uh Chris, your son, Freddie, your daughter, twenty years apart. That's a very big gap. What was the experience like second time around?

Martina Cole27:30

What was the experience?

Martina Cole27:32

It was a lot better than the first time round, I can tell you that there. Especially'cause I could afford a nanny. So it was lovely. I had a nanny. Leelie, who stayed with me for years, she's still a part of the family to this day. It's hard though, because the first time round you've got all that energy. And I was I'd you know, I was always going to work, I'd always find stuff to I used to

Presenter27:37

Right.

Speaker 127:47

Yeah.

Martina Cole27:51

like clean people's ovens for money on a Sunday to get an extra for your quid, you know. And of course this time round we had a car, we had all the things that you're supposed to have, and so it was wonderful, yeah, it was great. And she was such a dear baby.

Martina Cole28:05

Attie had her baby three weeks ago today, so I'm a great mother.

Presenter28:08

I'm a mother for the fourth time.

Martina Cole28:10

The force.

Presenter28:10

Yeah.

Martina Cole28:10

But

Presenter28:10

And does Gran have much time to actually see the grandkids, given how much she's still writing?

Martina Cole28:10

And

Martina Cole28:14

No, I see them. They live near me. I see my grandchildren constantly.

Presenter28:18

So you you have this rich big family life. You're still working. Do you still plan to keep on writing? Do you sort of have to write? Is it

Martina Cole28:23

You still planted.

Martina Cole28:24

You sort of have to write, is it? I think that's a great thing about being an author is we're like doctors and judges. We can carry on till we drop. I couldn't imagine my life without work. I don't think I could ever really retire because I think it I just don't think I could.

Presenter28:36

One of the dullest things surely that a person in my job can do is ask an author, Where do you get your ideas? And yet, do you comb the papers for your ideas?

Martina Cole28:44

It depends. Sometimes I can hear an expression and then it will set me thinking about something. Or someone will tell me something. We're chatting about something that's happened. What used to really make me angry when I was younger was you'd, you know, you'd read about this murder and it'd be all gone and just never heard nothing else. And the other one that used to really get my goat is you'd see a little tiny piece, you know, a woman's body was found, but they weren't even important enough to say anything about them. So I used to sort of try and work out what I thought happened.

Martina Cole29:12

And I think it probably went from there. I love the whole true crime. I mean, God, true crime is you can't help it, can you? You can't believe people are capable of it.

Presenter29:20

I'm going to cast you away to an island. You you'll be alone. How will that be for you?

Martina Cole29:25

Actually. I don't mind being alone. I like living alone and

Martina Cole29:29

I actually like my own company. I think most writers do if we're really, really honest. So when are you happiest then? Is it when you're alone writing?

Martina Cole29:37

I love having the children round. I adore having my grandchildren. But really, if I'm really, really honest, the happiest time for me is when everybody's gone and I can just relax and

Martina Cole29:50

read, write, do whatever I want to do. I suppose I'm quite selfish, really. It's a selfish thing. But I think after forty years of looking after children, I think I've earned the right to say, Talago, I've loved having you all.

Martina Cole30:03

I pour myself a large whiskey.

Martina Cole30:05

Put some water in it.

Martina Cole30:07

And that's me. I like that solitude.

Martina Cole30:10

The island'd probably suit me.

Martina Cole30:12

Tell me then about your final disc. What are we going to hear?

Martina Cole30:15

The final one of all is David Bowie game and it's word on a wing. I've stayed up all night and went out and bought it the minute it came out when I was a girl.

Martina Cole30:24

And I absolutely adore it. And station to station isn't everybody's idea of his greatest album, but it's one of his greatest to me.

Martina Cole30:32

And I think it was very spiritual, David Bowie, you know, he's a very spiritual man, as Lazarus has showed us all. But this I I felt this in the early seventies. I felt this was a a modern day prayer, you know, sort of a modern day hymn.

Martina Cole30:44

And I absolutely adored it and I still listen to it all the time.

Speaker 130:48

In this age you brand illusion, you walked into my love

Martina Cole30:53

Of my dreams.

Martina Cole30:58

I don't need another change, still a foster way to my scheme of things.

Martina Cole31:09

You say we're growing

Martina Cole31:13

Growing heart and soul

Martina Cole31:17

In this age of grand illusion

Presenter31:21

Word on a wing, David Bowie. Martina, it's time now for me to send you away to the island with three books. You get the Bible.

Martina Cole31:29

Yeah.

Presenter31:29

You get the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take another book along.

Martina Cole31:33

One of the first books that I bought from a jumble cell when I was a kid was A.J. Cronin's Hatters Castle. I was only a kid, I paid a couple of pence for it. And it was my first melodrama. You've got the Taybridge disaster in it, you've got a girl getting thrown out in a thunderstorm. So I'd probably take Hatters Castle because it is a book that I reread over and over again.

Presenter31:54

Okay.

Martina Cole31:55

That's yours, then.

Martina Cole31:56

And your luxury will be what? Well, my luxury was going to be Idris Elba, but obviously we can't take him out.

Presenter32:02

Yeah, you have to there's gonna be a big fight for that one.

Martina Cole32:03

There's gonna be a

Martina Cole32:04

Yeah. So I thought what my luxury might be is some really, really nice underwear, you know, really sexy, nice, beautiful underwear in case someone does turn up at the island at some point. We can only hope. I've always been a great believer in living in hope, you never know.

Presenter32:19

Okay, that's yours. Some very beautiful underwear, it is. And which of the disks, if you had to save just one, which one would it be?

Martina Cole32:25

After listening to them today, I'd probably have to say Galway Bain.

Martina Cole32:30

Because it brings back so much to me. I was suddenly.

Martina Cole32:36

Back in my mum and dad's house, and I could see their furniture, and I could see my nan, and she was always making tea. She was a great tea maker.

Martina Cole32:45

I do know it's really mad, but I I I was the only one out of all those kids who'd eat tripe. So me and my dad used to wait it's like something we did together was have the tripe. And I still eat tripe to this day. And so I think it'd probably be that because it brings back parties when my dad come home from sea, when all the family would come.

Speaker 132:51

Kai with

Speaker 132:53

And I'm sitting

Martina Cole33:00

And everybody would sing, there'd always be all the Irish songs. So it'd probably be Ruby today.

Presenter33:05

Ruby, Murray, and Galway Beatis then. Martina Cole, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Martina Cole33:09

Okay, let's just

Speaker 133:10

So

Presenter33:11

Thank you.

Presenter33:26

Hi, I hope you enjoyed that podcast with Martina Cole. We have cast away many, many writers on our island over the years. You can hear their programmes in our archive at bbc.co.uk Desert Island Discs. They include Stephen King, Ian Fleming, Daphne De Maurier and Val McDermott, who I met back in 2013.

Presenter33:47

Tell me more then about the actual process of writing, all of the things that go together to make the kind of convincing crime novels that you write.

Speaker 333:55

It generally starts with a small idea, something that makes me go, I didn't know that, or something that makes me go, yeah, but what if that happened instead? And from that, I start playing with the idea. And generally, this is a process that will take years. I think probably the longest was a book called A Place of Execution, which was about 20 years in the making from the first idea to being actually ready to write it. So patience is a really important part of the process. And over the years, bits fall into place. It's about building connections and telling myself stories. Sometimes when I find I have technical things that I need to know about, I'll go and talk to an expert and then I'll make some notes because that's technical stuff you need to get right. But mostly it happens in my head and then I start to write.

Presenter34:36

So, how do you index that in your head then? Do you have a very sort of clinical process? I think I'll put that there for a while and I'll keep it bubbling away, but right now I'm writing this.

Presenter34:46

Yeah.

Speaker 334:46

The nearest I've come to being able to categorise it over the years is is to think of it as a bunch of supermarket trolleys rattling around in the back of my head. And every time you add something to the trolley, it sends you in more in one direction than another. So it is that kind of process of all these half filled supermarket trolleys bouncing around in the back of my brain.

Presenter35:03

Now, of course, you're not writing horror, but you are writing often about a lot of horrible things I mentioned in the introduction, you know, abduction, murder, you know, you write about domestic violence, you write about torture, all sorts of horrendous things. Do you find that easy?

Presenter35:19

Yeah.

Speaker 335:19

I don't find any of it easy as such. I think all the things that I write about are things that happen in the world. And so I think whatever I'm writing about, whether it's it's love or death, I have to approach it in the same way, to try to be honest, to try to understand the motive springs of this kind of behaviour. Oh.

Presenter35:37

Wonder if there is

Speaker 335:37

Is there any relevance in being a woman and writing this sort of stuff? I think there is a difference from the way women write about violence and the way men write about it. Little girls grow up with a sense of the threat of the world. Every single one of us who is a woman over the age of ten years old has walked down a street and heard footsteps behind them and immediately gone flash forward to the movie of the terrible things that are about to happen to us. That's not how men grow up thinking of themselves in the world. Women have that imaginative experience of victimhood before they ever encounter it often. And so we're writing about it from the inside. And I find that mostly, with a few notable exceptions, mostly when men write about violence they write about it as a spectator. And if you're writing about something fearful from the point of view of the person who's scared, then it's much more scary.

Martina Cole36:37

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Speaker 136:40

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Speaker 137:01

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Speaker 137:24

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