Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Times columnist, novelist, and dramatist, known for her feminist and humorous writing on taboo subjects.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:26What's your purpose as a columnist?
That's when you write. Ooh, rage is very bad for the complexion. No, I don't like rage. It's all about angles, really. Columnists either go, this is fantastic, or usually this is a bad thing. And I like to sort of walk around the snooker table of topics and kind of come at it from a different angle, like, how did this happen? Or what will happen if this continues? Or my favourite one is to simply boggle. A lovely boggle rather than being outraged at something is a much better way of doing something. And I actually do want to change people's minds and give people different ideas. You do want to change people's minds.
Presenter asks
2:47You write about things like masturbation, abortion, menstruation – should these be off limits?
I mean, I always felt these were things that I wanted to talk about, and I was aware that they were not the kind of thing that you're supposed to talk about. … The weirdness of the things that we seek to be taboo is something that, you know, is a great pleasure to sit down as a writer because you just look, and to me, it feels like I've got an open field. Very few people are writing about benefits or being working class or shame or being fat, mental illness, all the things that I like to write about. So it's an empty field. I get to be first.
Presenter asks
It's working class, it's written by a woman, and it's line by line, I think, the funniest book ever written. Particularly the bit where Adrian's mum goes, There's only one thing more boring than other people's problems, Adrian, and that's other people's dreams.
The luxury
I just want to be able to write because I can write characters and I'd be able to talk to them. I wouldn't be lonely.
You've described your father as a would-be rock star who never fulfilled his potential. How much did he believe that he would?
Oh, absolutely. It was always pending. It was one of those this time. I mean, when we used to watch Only Fools and Horses and Delboy would go, this time next year, Rodders will be millionaires. That was absolutely the mantra in our house. … He was always recording these songs and it was always pending to the point where when we were watching Live Aid, he would be absolutely furious that he wasn't on Live Aid.
Presenter asks
7:38What are your most pungent memories of poverty?
Pungent is the right word. It's primarily smells. The smell of boiling potatoes. The combination of hot dust and kind of chip fat on a curtain. Ice inside the windows. Towels mainly. You know, when you're poor, you don't know what a dry towel is. All the towels are wet all the time because you're sharing them amongst so many people. And also being able to identify a specific sibling or parent from their smell that they'd left on a towel.
Presenter asks
23:33When you're not writing, sitting with a mug of coffee looking out at the garden, what are you thinking about yourself?
You will die soon, so keep writing. Once you start making a list of all the things that haven't been told, or the stories that haven't been told, the characters that you haven't seen, it's a lifetime's work. And I panic that I won't even get a third of the way through it before I die of lung cancer, because I can't stop smoking.
“I like to sort of walk around the snooker table of topics and kind of come at it from a different angle, like, how did this happen? Or what will happen if this continues? Or my favourite one is to simply boggle.”
“We were brought up in a house with no religion and no rules and no boundaries and not much heating. And the only sort of framework we had for belief was the Beatles. They were our Jesus.”
“I can remember sort of at the age of six or seven, sort of like I was washing a wall, because all the walls were dirty, I was washing a wall, and I suddenly thought about myself in the future. And then I realised that once you'd start thinking about yourself in the future, you could start talking to yourself in the future. And that just kind of made it a lot more interesting.”
“You will die soon, so keep writing.”
“It's not about surviving. It's about trying to cram in as much joy as possible.”