This is the bbc hulu on Kirsty young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of desert on an discs from BBC radio for for rights reasons. The music choices are shorter. Then, in the radio broadcasts for more information about the programme. Please visit bbc dotcom, dont uk slash radio for the the. My customary this week is the rice were catalan, moran colonists, novelist, dramatist, her methods may vary, but our message stays pretty constant amid a contemporary landscape of unprecedented verbiage, her voice rings clear and true, and

funny. She is very funny and her ability to constantly analyze, articulate and amuse is frankly a smudge dazzling. She writes to weekly columns for the times has published five books, the first age just sixteen and co written in a week. winning sitcom too. If you already enjoy her work, you will certainly news was born. One of eight children raised in a council of state on benefits and home schools from the age of eleven may say schooled. Her parents basically left her to it. She didn't set any exams, but she did read every book in her local mover hampton. library. She says, I believe in getting deluded intoxicated optimism, because that is the fuel that will keep you going long off

anger and righteousness of fear have burned out. I look everywhere for things to make me optimistic, sir. Welcome catamaran you to star columnist, as we know for the times and columnists, are often hired for their ability to sort of rage and fulminate and tell the world how it should be. What's your purpose when you write ooh rage is very bad for the complexion, and now I don't like rage. I talked about angles, really columnists see the 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 favorite one is to simply boggle a lovely boggle rather than being outraged at something is, 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 mind. I mean you ardently you are avowedly a feminist. You are left wing in your views. It is your purpose to change people's won't, find it in print. I'm total mess,

in politics, liberal elite. I've had a t shirt made up with that written on it because I think their opening words metropolitan living in cities- that's fantastic. These crucibles were incredible ideas and different people get to meet each other, and this is how we progress as a society. Liberal. Absolutely yes, I believe everybody should be just allowed to do whatever they want so long as they're, not hurting anyone else and elite elite is the best word of all elite means you spent twenty or thirty years, trying to be the best at something. Of course I mean you're deliberately. Choosing of to misunderstand the face for the effective comedy and at work, but also you write about things like masturbation and abortion menstruation. These are not the typical things that people might choose to read about It's the slather marmalade on the toast of a of a morning to the things that you think should be off limits. I mean 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, and it took me awhile to realize that you know your your newspaper read about war. All the time you be reading about millions of people dying and yet being able to write about master she is seen as wrong. I'm films, vietnam, writing films, scripts

thanos have have these conversations where I'm like you know. I want to show menstruation and one show a girl having a period and people. Sort of blend should be a bit scared and you be like I'm gonna seen a million films are seen thousands and fast of gallons of blood shed in war I have not seen a single minute visa of menstrual blood, which is, let us forget, the blood of life, there's no war, that if we did not have periods, this world would be completely empty. The weakness of the things that we we seek to be taboo is something that you know is a great pleasure to sit down as a right, because you just look at did meet fizzle out. I've got an open field. Very few people are writing that benefits will being way in castle, shame or being fat. littleness livings. I like to write about such an empty field. I get me first, you were rising for the music paper, mosey make it when you would just sixteen and we ve made you today choose aids, it must have been a

the torture yeah, I imagine thanks yeah, you start off thinking. This is a great honor and ten minutes later you're like this is the worst thing. I've ever been asked to do my life on that basis. Tell me about this first one customer, and what are we going to hear? Oh well, the beatles? I can't really trust anybody. He wouldn't choose at least one beatles song For the rest, we were brought up in a house with no religion and rules and no boundaries and nominating, and the un offering what we had four belief was the beetle state. They were all Jesus.

Ah that's twist, and so it would be so catamaran. You ve described your father as a would be rockstar who never fulfilled his potential. How much did he believe that he would owe ass? It was. pending. It was one of those this time when we used to watch only fools and horses and adobo go this time next year. Voters will be millionaires that was that suit. The mentor in our house cause he'd been in a band, they been signed to record label. He was being produced by bogies produce attorney of his country. Use condone the scene was hot young man, and then the ban broke up and he came back of hampton and handle these kids and returned to the firemen and then a washing machine repairman, and then he developed arthritis and had to go into benefits and he was still next year. I will be back in music, Strict and next day will be in london, you be living in a huge house I'm gonna make it. He was always recording the songs and it was always pending to the point. Where were we watching live aid. He would be absolutely furious that he wasn't on live aid. You were the eldest child. How much did you believe it? As you were growing up? Oh totally, we went out in the

history formed around supporting our dad getting us back to london? I'd been given a calligraphy pen for my christmas present, one of a series of useless presents when I didn't have a bed or bedside lamp or any clothes. So I taught myself calligraphy and I would be the one that would have to write the addresses of all the different record labels onto the demos that we would send out in jiffy bags. That would then return a couple of months later with rejection letters, this state of perpetual hope. Then that seems like an important thing. You have chosen, as we say to be, or, as I said earlier to be optimistic is that is that, where it comes from and this idea that the sun will come out tomorrow, yes absolutely yes from the books that I read as well like. I know, if I didn't realize, but over literature, the red and all that I watch annie in any everything that Judy garland was ever in Jane Eyre. They rule just kind of weird working class. Girls are we go in there and it was always a right in the end, your father had met your mother when she was at sussex university and she dropped out to me

him. What are your earliest memories of your mum as a mum, and she was always pregnant? Obviously, because she had to pump out a kids should have a baby. She come back and you'd be quite ill, and so, when the baby was at two. She would sort of hand it over to me and the rest of the kids and go off and have another baby, and then we would have the kid would we'd have a new member the best I know in the world of my siblings. We would laugh so much and when we owe me, It is still the same as it always was. We just cry until we are weak, we took over each other. You may think I'd speak quite quickly This is so slow had left me with my symptoms. I, when you come from a big family, you can talk over each other. roy to each other- was: do you some kind of weird circular, breathing being the eldest of of eight children being raised. In this I mean a pretty small, I'm guessing three badge and cancel house. What are your most pungent memories of poverty, because poverty seers itself onto people pungent is the right word is primarily smells smell of boarding, potatoes. The combination of high

dustin kind of chip fat on a curtain ice inside the windows towels, mainly oh, you know when you're poor, you don't know what a drying towel is all the towels wet all the time, sharing them amongst so many people, and also being able to identify a specific sibling apparent from this smell of they left on a town. You I have said that I was raised on. Benefits has become my unlikely catchphrase. Why do you choose to write about it while I guess cause being brought up as a child of that? Yet you know you're constantly told that kind of you know that the cream will rise. You're told that if you do have, elite talent. You will progress and I look around and go okay. If that was true, there should be lots of other people who were raised on benefits who got jobs like mine, who are writers, or you know, script screenwriters whatever, and that just isn't. I am the exception pretty much. The culture and art in the media are supposed to be a mirror to show us what we are and that mirror so hopelessly bowed and broken and distorted. That do not see what we are as a country and

We cannot see what we are. How can we progress? How can we have any politics? Things do not change. So that's why it's incredibly important for me to try and be a bit of the mirror that can represent people who are on benefits and go yet you are seen you are hurt. I will talk about your story, so have some music calendar and to me, but Second eu kate bush, so seventy nine wuthering heights on top of the pops? The thing about top of the pops was at six o'clock: you'd have the news which will be about war and he died, and then you'd have top of the pops at seven, which would tell you all the amazing things we ve invented this new kind of person with invented this new kind of aunt. He is a new whether you can have your hair and when kate Bush appeared, that was Based on. I saw someone you. I went. Oh my god. That could be me. This could changed my life primarily because she appeared to be wearing Nineteen just spinning ran around on the spot and that to me was an achievable look that I could do. I could be tight bush. name

Yeah the you. yeah, kate bush. And was wearing heights. He would dancing then aged four. You probably would have been when that came out and you are dancing still. I should partially dislocated my shoulder during that during the way the hand these, I regret that now, yeah caitlin moran words and thoughts and humor seemed to come sort of gushing out of you spewing, as if you're almost in a torrent. Will you like that as a little girl is a little schoolgirl? Ah

Yes, I mean I remember, having very young having no friends, and I couldn't reed yet, but I knew books would like a shield that would get you safe and were door into a world that you could escape three. So I just had a copy of the railing children, which I was reading upside down, because I could not read- was nobody else- was running around having fun and playing nick adjacent kiss why were you not? I had not going to nursery, because I screamed so much on the way to school, my mother at between physically dragon nurse you on the first day and on the second day ass, she went on with her to school, So and then everybody turned up for the first. I infants coolio knew each other, and I didn't but me you I've been to each so many people who are creative and have done things and that almost all of them were observers robin taking part you wanna scholarship to over hampton girl school, and you left after how many weeks I was there for weeks, and why was it just four weeks are a just: they were all push they don t, just open depressing

rules and that you know they ve been taught things like algebra, I hadn't, and there was immediately bullying those ago. You hated me straight away. I was fat and weird and I'd read enough books about building to know that this would continue for years and what used what you, the deuce punch that got in the face, but I just knew that I had a very poor left hook. So am I just left the schools but I understand when you used the word posh what you want you to know the short handed For I mean your mum. Innocence was paul, sheldon middle class girl from the middle class household, or I suppose, yes, but we lived in a three bedroom council as that smelt, and at that point my parents had decided that they were going to breed alsatians in order to earn money cause they'd been given to dodgy dogs so of every you'd have to wake up and fill up a bucket full of boiling water and dental and got a sweep at the kitchen, would just be full of puppy, poo, so sort of going from that to the posh school surrounded by these posh girls. Who would be talking about ponies? Was you know at just the gulf fell to two unbridgeable. They just felt

Exhausting you talk about all of these things in that wonderful sort of quick clipped humorous disregarding way, but it cannot feel like that when you look back, at what was going on in that house. What are you really thinking about it? I and because my parents were, I mean we were very poor and and very smelly, but my dad, particularly in a very unusual, very clever, very funny. They believed in being funny or they believed in books and the dad was kind of like a proper hippy innovators of into light reedy big, send concepts like just breathe. Exist. The moment be aware, things didn't really understand. fine, but they did filter through, I can remember over the age of six or seven supply was washing wool, so it was what it is she wore a sunny thought about myself in the future, and then I realized once you 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. And what and what does your current self say to your past self?

that childhood it says it remind me of more details from that time, because you got a lot more books and sitcoms and films to mine from this rich seam of tragedy. I, like you but you're, slightly infuriating to insert you tell me about your next piece of music ever gonna. Listen to your thoughts. What's next, oh, what is next oh flowed out. We can do yes so and we're waiting for my dad to be famous and then around about age. Thirteen. I realized that it wasn't. to happen, so I started to read my first novel when I was thirteen and then it became a meeting. and his two sixteen and I came down to london I was a mad child in a hat and everything could happen in the night. I come from being alone in this house, had never seen anyone to going out at night with people taking drugs and become sex and weekend by Florida. is all about how one night can change your life and how horribly wrong it, and this is why I chose weekend by louder

right. So why flared up? and a catamaran, I'm gonna slow you down and back you up, because you went very quickly through this extraordinary period of your life and it was when you were aged thirty you'd one. This. It was an essay competition. Was it for Dylan's bookstore, and you decided as a result of that, to set of boats or writing your first novel. Will. I say because of that, but also, as you say, because you wanted to get to london and new want to earn money and writing seemed like the way you could do that and you clearly could write this book. They ended up being published when you were sixteen. How did you get it published

one of the judges on it was valerie grove, the columnist at the times, and she taken an interest in me and had done a feature on me when I was thirteen going look, this girl is home, educated yet can write. So when I wrote this book Send it to her, when she didn't reply within twenty four hours going on. We will give you a publishing contract and you moved on to london. Now I was furious, but in the end she did pass it onto a publisher and they publish it when I was sixteen I mean at I, wouldn't you say the sentence that you write your facebook or thirteen, it sounded absolutely ridiculous and I just want to apologise once what did you do with the money? How much money did you get when I thought this is one of the annoying things if you're working class- and you don't know anybody who works in the industry- you've got no idea how it works or how much money you might get. So I presumed that if you wrote a book, you'd probably get maybe six or seven million pounds and we would all be fine forever. Unlimited. Finally, written under was right to be published that they set and you advance will be one thousand eight hundred pounds and I was like real.

I got. The d: that's not going to support my entire family and get my life off to london. So so then I was still sort of similar as to valerie grove at the times that went okay, I read a book by accidents and it sent me absolutely no money at all. How do you earn money being a writer and she went? You need to begin installing the economist centers like right, hey, hope, I'll, be economist. Then so then I started entering genders in competitions, noticed, become columnist, tell me, but you next piece of music catamaran, my next piece of music, it's my clawing section crowded house, are putting my favorite banned when I was at manage, make as we have sixteen year old girl. When you walk through the door, it was not the container in star wars, it was full of freaks. that was very cool and they took drugs. They taught me fast and then there was this one curly head boy who wore jumper. He was not one of the coop ways, and I ended up having to go back to his task as I missed my lost train but two of hampton and on the cheap. Way back, he went I've got a big secret to tell you before you come back to my house and he went down to Anybody else at them? As you make a bit, I like crowded house and I went online

right. It has two because you could not like credit eyes. If you you make it. They would mean logic. They were successful so that this is a big confession that we loved crime has this is why we are now married and this one The girl, you think you are, I was stood in a phase of remorse, what you had to be legendary, just drinking drugs and just come in a room being witty and incredible, and my husband, just when you don't how about just being nice instead- and I was like- oh my god- That would be far less exhausting. I could do that and that's what they somebody is. Not the girl. You think the

HANS and not the girl. You think you are a little bit before you met the man who would become your husband catamaran at seventeen. You were living and working in london and you enjoys a couple of years of what you brilliantly coins to use of rum, putting yes You call them your sex quest years. I'm wondering what gave you the confidence to do that seventeen and for you learned well what you learn that we can broadcast moon, absolutely nothing in it. life experiences is outlined at nothing, realising that life basically divides roughly two categories. One is amazing experiences. Things are incredible at the time and the second ease things that powerful at the time but which will later make incredible anecdotes, and that's the georgie of the sex that you have in your having your early years may have felt quite david Attenborough risk going out there in conflict How then work? This is what will happen when we go to bed and why

mainly was that you can't trying recreate things that you ve, seen in particularly madonna videos and particular divide I too am latka with very scared. Twenty three. Man in a bedsit in south london, because when you start dripping wax onto his genitals without warning in advance people scream. I got. What are you doing? Are you insane and then you'll both sit there trying to pick dried wax of his people and it will be impossible and you'll end up having to shave. You often he'll be quiet lopsided, for while Europe eligible costs that will- I love that stays in. I wonder when your signings and you meet young girls. How do they respond to you, because this is new? This is not. This has not been written about before. No, oh god, oh it makes me excited when you say that cause that's all I ever wanted to do and it's a I'll, be serious for a second I'm not going to tell any jokes but telling jokes from MILAN eats is one of the most extreme and astonishing is rings, is my life so two years ago did stand up:

Where's me on stage learning two hours talking about my life and it be funny, and but it would be truthful and we sat then after so do signing, and these would go in for like three Four hours for five hundred six hundred seven under people queuing up come and meet me, and I would hope, every single one of them and at sign everything and we talk, and I would little girls crying and the point you ve met thousands of people, a couple of months, the as they walked toward ye can see their stories. You can see the girls self, harming you can see the girls who eat too little and are starving themselves. You can see the girls who eat too much to crush down their feelings. You self harmed yourself yeah, I mean just a tiny bit. You know I mean it was the early ninetys. This is what we did. Kind of renault laws are not true common. That's not what people did. I didn't do that much she has many many people. I noted to that. I would have written about this. That kind of its The way all I've been wanting to talk to you and you can leave feelings you just kind of taint the feeling and you physically manifested on your own

you can see, that's where the problem is from and it and you go. Oh that's what it is, but what you're reading is you're writing a message to yourself going. Don't feel this bad again learn from this! I'm writing a letter to you in the future. Did writing feel like a release. Then I always feel bad talking to other writers cause whenever they talk about writing. Usually it's kind of like oh the blank page and I've just always found it. It it Single easiest thing I can do is to write, has widened vary, but my mouth waters like him about to eat something delicious writing is beautiful. The hard way is the sitting We must fit in the music. Catalan. Tell me about the next one: it's! U fifth! I get. This, I think, is probably the most perfect record of all the ones I have chosen, Before vague, I haven't got Madonna machine like tony girl when she first and I would like a virgin. She was pretty. She was thin, she's, really competent, she's, very fashionable new clothes and as a fat go with spectacles, he believed that she was Jane Eyre, recyclable. You would be my enemy and you would not like me, vote comes along and I might know I get. It was the custom unsuitable

be successful and mainstream and it looked brilliant. She wasn't alternative. She was trying to be supreme- was Madonna vogue. And so catamaran moran. There you were, you were sixteen you and size. Twenty to your home had rats

with no gcs cs are eight levels and you had by your own admission new friends. Here you sit before me. A fantastically successful columnist for nearly it'll be twenty. Five years this year, at the times you've published five books. You have two children, you look to be about a size. Ten both were twelve. I hate to use the word journey because it makes me feel slightly queasy MM year, but the truth is it's a cracker of a journey. When you not writing when you're sitting with a mug of coffee looking into the garden own neuron, and you are not producing a version of your thoughts for consumption. What are you thinking about yourself, air,

You will dolly soon so keep writing when she stopped making a list of all the things that haven't been told. All the stories 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 third of the way through before I die of lung cancer, because I can't stop smoking to feel like a survivor. Do you feel like you've survived, something now because of my inner, I know from going at their meeting people in the region. I write these things because the system have most people are you know we were all frederick things. Would we be fake it till we make it in a we present these problems so of faces, but underneath were all dealing with massive things, everyone's got problems, so you know everyone is surviving. You just trying to the most fun venture that always look for the join it because it when she died? even in afterlife, and you realize how very short and tiny life is, then you realize the ultimate purpose of life is to experience as much joy as possible. That's the thing that we can do. That is the thing that that elevates us above everything else on this planet. So it's not about surviving it's about trying to cram in as much joy as possible,

stop smoking by the way. I don't tell me about your next piece of music. What are we gonna hear a well, but I suppose that's a forest of we're talking about that dated bowie god he was just elegant, and when he was so thin. His teeth looked fat like kind of extraordinary looking man, rock n roll suicide ease. one of by this again scrapping useful when he died of what he said. The same thing I felt it was my friend I felt he came into my bedroom and tell me was going to be ok. Rural suicide is designed feed. Stop mining away to it. Looking yourself in the mirror, thinking ahead the reading, tragic and wrecked, and by the time the core was comes in you'll, be mining, sober you being join being david bogey. So much that you change your mind about might as well live

so then the sound still don't let them. you're, not alone, that was David bowie and walking suicide. Captain moran your sitcom, raised by wolves won the prestigious rose, D'Or award back in the twenty sixteen just last year. You've described it as a sympathetic portrayal of the working classes. How much does feeling in touch with where you came from?

seem important to know because, as you say, you lived the life of a metropolitan elites, star journalist and writer, yes, are specified for this. Leading them, I thought I do and living where I do means that it's impossible not to write constantly about being working class and cancel estates, and we had kids in the people. You don't get written about. Let me just what you seem. You say it's impossible, because what because you feel that it would be what you wouldn't be doing its duty or you would be on because living instead of media middle class, oxbridge white male london. You are constantly

in a world where everyone presumes, that's normal, that that's not a thing that that's neutral, that that's the baseline of human experience and the anything outside that is over. That needs to be specially commissioned. All kind of like now will go. Take a look at these lives for twenty minutes, underneath his rock in a kind of attenborough way and not understanding that those lives the working class lives. Those benefits we had kids ought to die. That's u no kind of that! The human intelligence, the brilliance, the funny the joy, the life is, the normal Payments that have most people are, and yet those lives are treated like a special case. I wanted to ask you about that, because, according to the most recent and their government figures, forty three percent of newspaper, comus or privately educated, seven percent of the population, as we know, is eminently educated rising in the times, do you often feel them like a sort of exotic species? Will they don't treating and they have been? amazing, oh my god, to be given a column in a national newspaper at age, seventeen and they have been incredibly supportive for the last twenty five years. They basically hired a mad child in a

from all the hampton I gave a space international newspaper, but I am very way. I keep constantly being told. Why do you want for the guardian instead cause those readers know this stuff? I am writing to judges. You know I'm writing to mps, I'm writing two people, these mines. I want to change. You know it'd be showing them what this life is like? Let's have some more music catamaran. It is time for your seventh we've got thirty seconds more of class war. Haven't we had cause it? It's pope's common people. Britpop was an incredible time to be a teenager and when pope protect come on people, which is the british pound to kind of like middle class tourists coming to live a working class life and to thinking it's all fun and not realizing the desperation that that lies underneath her. I just thought I living through an amazing time and there's nothing like this. Have you know you don't get working class ban singing about life in Britain today, and I think maybe, if we did have a ban, might pulsating sounds like common people. We might not have bricks it you did. That is what culture is for. It is a release for laxative.

She stood a sculpture and his comrades who slew a study that was pope. people. Tell me captain moran, you were brought up, as he told me, early city with no rules, no boundaries, new heating. At what sort of mother are you? A very present to the point that they, which they would be quite annoyed about the Wait, I'm kind of I'm there in the morning, I'm there in the evening as he'll turn everything down. I'm kind of I just like hanging out with

that really really funny, and once we got past the pepper pig stage and we can start working properly, It was I going to seinfeld and Marvin Gaye. They ve, just the delightful people, took to hang out with them Surprisingly, I have read you describe yourself as an obsessive gardner. Oh yes, this not expect what guineas about playing the time. Isn't it like when you create a garden you making it the present, but your imagining the future as you plant, something you either. Is what it will look like in spring when it's covered in blossom and then in summer the leaves will will cover everything. Then, in autumn this will be bright red and on fire in winter, then I will have bury so it's like time. Travel you're, conducting, Anthony there's a rhythm to any music to a magic to it. That is true sending over everything else. you know and unlike the smell of earth. So given I know you are an adept gardener or at least enthusiastic one. You will tame your island. Will you you will be growing things. You will be what I've been thinking about this may I just need to us by the lay out, and so the topography of this now is it. Is it one on and that we all end upon? No, it's not

you are well on your own. You can see nobody. The island is big enough to adventure owned, but not so big that you might get lost so I can't swim to like Bruce Springsteen's island bar his records. Then my kind of you'd have to beat me to it. I'd say you are going to be a lot of bodies in nazi going to I'm staying violent. Where are you going Springsteen's island? I want to touch his pigs. Rock me bruce. Tell me about your last piece of music. I am Marie's gotta work. She just talking about why work is great, and this, for me, in a nutshell, is why art is fantastic in why poppies fantastic she's turned what we would all just simply moan about on a bus into just the funk he's thing ever halfway through you like your work. Work is amazing. What makes me does what makes me shake my booty.

Thank you for work. That was a maria and go to work catalan. It's time for me to give you the books that I give to everybody. I'm gonna give you a copy of the bible and the complete works shakespeare and you get to take another book along with them. What is your book? Gonna be yeah I'll not be using them, above all the shakespeare. I will just simply be reading that all your bedroom mole over and over and over again it's working class is written by women and its

line by line nothing. The funny spoke of written tricky that, where Adrian's mum goes, is only one thing, more boring than other people's problems adrian and that other people's dreams. Absolutely true. That's your book! and a luxury item. It's not been invented yet, but I am confident that you'll be out in person cobbled together itself. I would like a solar powered laptop. It is not connected to the internet, it doesn't have any search ability on it. It is simply really us with just a word processor. Yes,. 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. I will even give you one of those little jelly covers, the sands doesn't in the keyboard. That's really thoughtful design thought there, which one of these eight tracks. If you had to save one from the waves which one would it be, I think, it'd be the beatles. I guess the reedy comforting catamaran. Thank you very much for letting, as EU desert island discs my pleasure

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