Star Struck (40 page)

What was the inspiration for Star Struck?

That poor girl who came onto the
X-Factor
show in a dress her dad had made her which made her look like one of those lacy doll toilet roll covers from the ’80s. She looked less like a pop star than anyone the British public has ever clapped eyes on and then proceeded to sing an entire song in one off-key note. The producers had obviously decided she was TV gold but it was her family that were the most shocking thing about the whole episode – they genuinely believed she was good and piled in to tell Simon et al exactly what they thought of their put downs. It made me begin thinking about people who have their fifteen minutes of fame and then have to go back to their lives and deal with being that person who was laughed at by the entire country. Then my editor Gillian suggested that it would be far more interesting to have the mad family but give the auditionee some talent and watch them proceed in the talent competition. So that’s what I did.

Have you ever felt tempted to enter a talent show? If so, what was your talent?

I’ve never entered a talent competition as such but I used to sing solo as a child in the church choir and would have to sing in front of visiting dignitaries and at weddings and the like.

I did however once, when I was living in Dublin, audition for a group in Ireland called The Irish Sopranos. Contrary to what my surname may suggest I have a big Bradford accent and sound more like a Dingle than a Corr and I think the clue
to
what they were after was definitely in the title of the band! I got in there and as soon as I opened my mouth I could see them thinking ‘Nooooooooo!’ After I’d sung I rather pathetically asked, ‘I’m sorry, did you need me to be Irish?’ I can only assume this would be like auditioning for the Lippizzaner Stallions and saying, ‘I’m sorry, did you need me to be a horse?’

Dream Casting time: who would play Catherine in the movie of Star Struck? Any other thoughts on the rest of the cast?

Catherine would be played by a young Shirley Henderson, Jo would be played by some undiscovered sarcastic talent who is currently living on an estate somewhere thinking that her family don’t understand her and Mick would be played by John Thompson.

X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent?

It depends.
X Factor
is slicker but doesn’t have room for unicycling dogs. So I think it would have to be
Britain’s Got Talent
.

Which book are you reading at the moment?

At the risk of sounding worthy I’m reading
An Evil Cradling
by Brian Keenan about his time in captivity in Beirut. It’s been staring at me from my bookcase for about eight years and I’ve finally made myself read it and brilliant it is too.

Who are your favourite authors?

Roald Dahl – brilliant as a kid to discover him after years of thinking everyone other than me and my friends were missing out because we didn’t a) go to private school b) hang around in a group of five or seven, or c) have a magical tree at the bottom of the garden inhabited by a man adorned with pots and pans and another with the moon for a head. Enid Blyton has a lot to answer for. For comedy I love Marian Keyes and Alexi Sayle’s
short
stories. Recent novelists I’ve enjoyed have been Lionel Shriver, Jonathan Franzen and I’ve re-read some Graham Greene which I didn’t really get when I was younger but loved this time round - my Catholic guilt must be getting more acute.

Which classic have you always meant to read and never got round to it?

The entire Dicken’s collection probably. When my dad retired he started reading the classics and has totally put me to shame. I do think though that it is easy to feel a bit thick if you haven’t read every book ever written before 1935. So I’ve had to come to an uneasy truce with myself and admit that life’s too short to read
Jude the Obscure
.

What are your top five books of all time?

It’s hard to choose five and there’s always the risk of just putting classics so that everyone thinks you’re really well read and ladi-da. So here are five books which have been really important to me over the years for different reasons.

Do you have a favourite time of day to write? A favourite place?

It would be nice to slope around waiting for the muse to descend but I’m dictated to by my son, so when he’s asleep or in nursery. And I love writing in Manchester Central Library and at the National Media museum in Bradford. The café there is brilliant.

Which fictional character would you most like to have met?

I know he’s loosely based on reality, but Macbeth. I’d say, ‘You know that missus of yours, I wouldn’t listen to her, she’s not all there.’

Who, in your opinion, is the greatest writer of all time?

It’s so hard to say because different generations have different writers that are important for that time. I also think that writers in all their forms should be recognized for their power with words and that there is sometimes a worthiness unjustly attached to novel writing. Political speech writers, film writers, journalists as well as novelists – anyone who can move people and make a positive difference to someone’s life is a great writer – I suppose that’s a long winded way of saying I don’t think there is one ‘greatest writer’.

Other than writing, what other jobs have you undertaken or considered?

I’ve had every job going. I’ve going to sound like a Victorian orphan but I had my first job aged twelve – a paper round. I enlisted the help of my brother who was seven at the time. As I only paid him 50p a week for his services he rightly mutinied one evening and left me to it in the pouring rain.

My first Saturday job was in Bradford meat market aged fourteen surrounded by men who had worked too closely with raw meat for too long. Everything was an innuendo. I hated that job. I got £1.50 an hour, had bits of meat stuck under my finger nails by the end of the day and had to wear a tabard like a dinner lady. After a year of this I managed to wangle a job at a shop called Guy Watson’s (anyone of a certain age from Bradford will remember this institution). It was a gift shop/joke shop/borderline soft porn shop. I worked there for four years and loved it. I used to volunteer to stock-take and see how many chocolate
willies
I could eat before I was told to go on my break. I then worked in numerous factories around Bradford during the summer holidays from university. The shampoo factory where you weren’t allowed to pack medicated shampoo for more than half an hour because it made your nose bleed. The card factory where one of the women had ‘bitter’ and ‘lager’ tattooed above her nipples. When I enquired why she simply said, ‘For my husband.’ The catalogue factory where two lads were sacked for trying to sneak out with fifteen football tops on each.

After all this, when I graduated I was dying to work in an office and have a ‘normal’ job but I soon realized that all jobs have their quirks. I worked as a secretary in a school in Moss Side which was a brilliant job and a great place to work but then I worked out I could earn at least six grand more by calling myself a PA so that’s what I did until I started writing about seven years ago. I worked in Manchester and then in Dublin as a PA. When I returned to Manchester to try my hand at writing I supported myself by being a waitress -this was my favorite job of all. Everything happened in that restaurant and it was brilliant for pinching characters. From the sleazy businessman I overheard saying to his secretary while evidently trying to get into her pants, ‘I’m a human being first and a businessman second’ (GAG!), to the old lady who lived in a home down the road but used to pretend she’d just jetted in from Monaco whenever she came in. This was one job which might not have paid much but stood me in good stead for becoming a writer.

Which book has made you laugh? Which book has made you cry?

Marian Keyes always makes me laugh. She is hilarious. There was something she wrote about the Irish compulsion to sing at the drop of a hat that made me sick laughing. The last book that made me cry was
Sophie’s Choice
.

Which book would you never have on your bookshelf?

I’d happily take some of my husband’s books to the tip. There are a lot of drug lords and psychopathic nut jobs that write books and they make their way into our house. Anything that starts ‘From the mean streets of Liverpool to the crack dens of Calcutta to the showers of St Quentin, this is the story of one man’s journey from poverty to international crack baron …’ for me can go and live in the bin. I think that men like these books for the same reason they like
Police, Camera, Action
. Whatever that reason may be …

Is there a particular book or author that inspired you to be a writer?

Not really a book or author. My friend Danny Brocklehurst is a TV/film writer and we used to share a house years ago. He used to get up and eat his cornflakes in front of
Trisha
and start work at ten while I would leave the house at eight and cycle into the city centre and get rained on nearly every day. I quickly began to think, maybe there’s something in this writing lark …

What is your favourite word?

Div. I’m not even sure it’s a real word but it covers a multitude of sins.