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Jenny Colgan - Author
Jenny is the bestselling author of Amanda's Wedding and a Whitbread book prize judge. She grew up in Prestwick, Ayrshire South.By far the most useful thing I've learned in life has been that nobody is thinking about you at all, hardly. Everyone's needlessly worrying about themselves.
I miss the people, and just the sense of being at home. And the architecture. I love Edinburgh, it's a wonderful size for a city with everything you could wish for. I suspect we'll head back one day. It's just so dark in the wintertime.
I think Muriel Gray is amazing, she's got a fascinating career, has met everyone and done everything and she's respected for her cleverness. And she's got great legs.
I want a great big townhouse in Edinburgh, a big grey thing on Dundas Street. I'm not interested in a hideaway, I'm a city girl.
It's one of the reasons, but not the main one. We just liked it, and it suits him. We hope he spends at least some of his childhood in Scotland. And his beloved grandparents are there of course.
Oh God, they're all horrid. Nobody likes getting them, not even really good professionals. The worst was somebody whispering- so nobody else could hear them, just me from the stage- into their mobile phone 'I'm just watching this really terrible comedian'.
Holly in the second book, Talking to Addison. TTA was based on a comic strip I used to draw, which was based on my life and friends. Nearly everyone in that book is immediately identifiable to themselves. It's my favourite book too, it's a very precise picture of my mid-twenties.
All of my characters are a bit rubbish, I'm not very good at great beauties or heroes. I'd like to meet Finn, the romantic scientist hero of Talking to Addison. I thought he was charming. Amanda from Amanda's Wedding would be a nightmare I suppose, but an entertaining one (I hope).
Postcards from the Hedge.
I've had a surprising number of good reviews, given my genre, but the one that really pleased
me was a letter written to The Observer, I think, by a novelist complaining that their
books were never reviewed. It concluded 'we can't all be Jenny Colgans or Bill Clintons', which
delighted me.
Why the author thought to include the two of us in the same sentence I will never know.
This sounds stupid, but I've held onto my friends for a very long time- from school and from university. In his speech at our wedding my husband said to everyone 'if you ever feel down, you should come round and listen to what Jen says about you' and I was very proud of that.
Good friend, good fun, good wife, good mum.
I'm past caring really. I get quite a lot of mail from men who've picked up their girlfriend's books on holiday or something and are amazed they find them funny. As far as I'm concerned I was always just a comic writer- my sense of humour is quite masculine, I like Viz and stand up and things like that. However it's a small price to pay for my nice life!
The once who do the hard stuff at the coal face - nurses, teachers, social workers, cleaners.
I'm lucky I get to meet a lot of writers. Kate Atkinson was marvellous, and I got to meet Gina Ford to say thank you for telling me how to get Wallace sleeping through the night! Fay Weldon is brilliant, a huge inspiration, and I have a bit of a crush on Deborah Moggach, as does everyone who meets her.
By far the most useful thing has been that nobody is thinking about you at all, hardly. Everyone's needlessly worrying about themselves. As soon as I realised that, I lost all my childhood self-consciousness. Nothing phases me now really.
It's from a film actually. People slag it off, but I thought Shakespeare in Love was
marvellous, and here's my favourite quote:
Henslowe: The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent
disaster.
Fennyman: So what do we do?
Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Fennyman: How?
Henslowe: Nobody knows. It's a mystery.
Oh snakes, I can't bear them.
I'd want to be a man for starters, so I could walk about on my own. I'd want to go and see the biggest towns they had. But I'd much rather go more recent- I'd love to see New York at the turn of the century, or Edinburgh in the enlightenment.
a) Read more than once
Alice in Wonderland I've read a gajillion times. And I could probably recite Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy off by heart.
b) Started and never finished
Underworld by Don DeLillo. Nobody's finished it though, so it doesn't really matter.
c) Know you really should read
The big Russians. I'm saving War & Peace just in case I accidentally get thrown into prison one day, but I should really make a start on Anna Karenina.
d) Wish you'd never bothered
Oh God I hated The Magus but read it all the way through. And The Glass Bead Game is dreadful too.
e) Dying to read next
Whatever Kate Atkinson, Dan Rhodes and Jon Krakeur do next.
Volunteer Reading Help. They're an amazing bunch of old ladies who go in and help disadvantaged kids with their reading.
Joining a stand- up evening class after my relationship broke up. It changed everything in my life, made me completely reassess myself, and everything flowed from there. And I nearly did calligraphy instead!
To find out more about Jenny please see www.jennycolgan.com
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