1. When did you think about writing as a career and what were your first steps into it?
I only write because it’s cheaper than therapy. I wrote my first novel, Puberty Blues, aged 17 about growing up in the Aussie surfie culture where the men disproved the theory of evolution - they were evolving into apes.
2. Best gig or gigs you've been to?
Bette Midler - the woman is the wind beneath my bingo wings; Kamikaze cabaret/ burlesque artist Meow Meow; and PORTS - a wild and wonderful band from Derry, who I predict will be the next U2.
3. The record you'd take to a desert island?
The Bach Brandenburg Concertos, the most perfect music ever composed.
4. Top three films?
The Women, written by Anita Loos, Thelma & Louise and Adam’s Rib.
5. Worst film you've seen?
The movie made of one of my own novels, Mad Cows. Having a bad movie made of one of your novels is like seeing your own child eaten by Cossacks.
6. Favourite authors?
The Brontes - I am a walking Brontosaurus; Jane Austen - a barbed commentator on the battle between the sexes; and Flaubert. Madame Bovary’s salutary tale of marital double standards could be renamed `The Mourning after the Knot Before’.
7. Ideal holiday destination?
I like a resort so exclusive that not even the tide can get in. I also love Donegal, not least because of the fact that the most northern tip of Ireland is actually in the south. How deliciously Irish is that?
8. Pet hate?
4 by 4s or Chelsea Tractors - those big, black behemoths, belching exhaust.
9. What's your favourite:
Dinner? My only dietary requirement is a toyboy on a bed of lettuce.
Dessert? A toy boy on a bed of meringue.
Drink? – Champers. It’s nature’s penicillin.
10. Who is your best friend and how do you know each other?
I have a fabulous comedic coven - Sandi Toksvig, Ruby Wax, Maureen Lipman and Ronni Ancona.
11. Is there a God?
Most marriages break up for religious reasons; he thinks he’s a God and, well, she just doesn’t.
:: Kathy Lette will be in conversation with Lynn Barber at the Elmwood Hall in Belfast this Sunday at 4pm, as part of the `Amongst Women’ strand of the Lughnasa International Friel Festival. Kathy’s latest novel, Courting Trouble, is out now.
