My new novel, 'To Love, Honour and Betray ­ till Divorce Us Do Part',
published by Transworld / Random House, will be out in September.
Basically it¹s about living with a teenage daughter ­ which is like living with the Taliban ­ a mum is not allowed to laugh, sing, dance or wear short skirts.

Lucy's been married for so long, her wedding certificate should be in
hieroglyphics. When Jasper walks out after 18 years, she panics. What will
she do about vehicle maintenance, shifting heavy objects and Allen keys? Not
to mention her rebellious teenage daughter Tally, who blames Lucy for the
marital meltdown.

Low self esteem is hereditary; you get it from your kids. While Tally's busy
trying to find a loophole in her birth certificate so she can put herself up
for adoption - Lucy strives to accept that a child is for life and not just
for Christmas. Could teenagers be God's punishment for having sex in the
first place?

This is a book about what to do when you fall in love. (Wipe it off your
shoes before you walk it all over the carpet.) But above all it's a survival
guide for anyone who has realized that a good marriage is like an orgasm -
many of them are faked.

 

Once upon a time I was streetwise. But last November I became suite- wise as I took up my position as writer in residence at the Savoy hotel. (Believe me, Scott went to the Antarctic with less luggage.) This grand, landmark hostelry want to rekindle their literary links as many famous writers, including Somerset Maugham, Mark Twain, Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde and Emile Zola all once lived at the Savoy.

When Pam Carter, the hotel's P.R. director rang and asked me if I¹d be interested (Would I be interested? What do you want? My first-born child? An internal organ?!); the news in the literary world went over like Pavarotti over a pole vault. Fellow writers wore the kind of facial expression normally associated with a probe of the prostate. Their smiles were so tight I thought it might cut off their circulation. The Conan the Grammarians were of the opinion that the position should have gone to a more highbrow type; one of those scribes who¹ve been at Oxford for so long they¹ve got ivy growing up the backs of their legs. (I left school at 15. The only test I¹ve ever passed is my breast self-examination.) But such intellectuals are so far up the social scale they can only be detected by a bat. And big hotels, while oozing glamour and sophistication, should also be about fun and frivolity. Now THAT'S something I could graduate in! Which is why I spent much of my time there in an alcoholic stupor. As well as having my own dish on the menu (Kathy Ome-lette, a spicy little number, but of course!) I had to choose a cocktail to be named after me. And well, I do like to be thorough in my research! We settled in the end, on a champagne and cassis concoction, 'Kathy Cassis', or 'Kathis', as I tend to pronounce it after I¹ve downed a dozen or so. I was telling my friend Julian Barnes how many men would now be able to boast that they'd "had" me.

"As long as they add that you went down rather well," he quipped in reply.

Apart from swanning, quipping and quaffing at the Savoy, I seem to have been doing nothing but dropping my own name in the most nauseating fashion, promoting my last novel 'Dead Sexy.' The book is a satire on the sex war and reality television ­ a genre designed for people who haven't got anything to do but watch people not doing anything! Programmers defend these series as "thought-provoking"... But the only thought it provokes for me, is "why the hell am I watching this crap!" Not only are the participants so moronic they should be watered once a week, but they also seem to keep fit by doing step aerobics off their own egos. My loathing of this Visual Valium is what made my interview on Sandy Toksvig's LBC radio show so ironic. The activist Peter Tatchell arrived with a T.V. crew in tow and what he thought might be a bomb which he'd just received through the mail. He was going to take it straight to the local police station - he said by way of reassurance - right after the interview. Peter can be a tad bombastic at times, but this, I felt, was going a little too far! Sandy and I dived for our bulletproof bras as the fire alarms shrieked and the entire station was evacuated. There was a certain poetic justice however, in having my last moments on earth captured on celluloid. "I'M A NON-ENTITY- BUT GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!"

For National Book Day, I'd promised to give a talk at my daughter, Georgie's school about what its like being a writer. Northbridge is the most gloriously happy and inspirational school. But I was finding the thought of the talk totally intimidating because the kids at Northbridge are so much better educated than I. (I can't even do my 10-year-old daughter's math homework. The other day she was looking for the square root of the hypotenuse. I didn't even know it was lost!) I suspected I was in for the most rigorous cross-examination of my career from these erudite bonsai Paxmans.

And so I staggered into school, from months of book touring, having been held hostage by my publishing P.R, wondering what pearls of wisdom I could impart about the joys of being a writer.

Well, never to share a radio studio with a civil libertarian caring mysterious packages.

Oh and that the only truly lucrative form of writing - is ransom notes.

Still, after all that fun in the Savoy, I do feel a new novel coming on.
And what can I call it but "Lady Muck."

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