10 QUESTIONS - Caitlin Moran

This week I telekinetically winged ten questions over to the force of mouthture that is Caitlin Moran. Caitlin used to write for Melody Maker and now writes for The Times and appears on TV spouting rubbish about crap. I first met her in Dublin at the beginning of 1994; I was trying to eat my dinner without interrupting an almost perpetual influx of beer and cigarettes and she was standing on the table, on the table mind, shouting her damn fool head off. I thought she was a nob, Queen Nob, but within hours of that we were best friends and I love her to bits. She has done much for me and my family but despite earning over a million pounds a year and living in a castle she still can’t beat me in a Beatles quiz, not even the ones where she writes the questions (her favourite kind of quiz). She can talk on any subject for at least ten minutes, makes a mean Victoria Sponge and has trained her youngest child to torment me, possibly into an early grave. Beautiful, funny and clever, it’s the only thing we both agree on.

1. Where are you? Describe your surroundings.

I am in my kitchen, which is based around the themes of RED, CAFFIENE and ORANGES SLOWLY ROTTING IN THE FRUIT BOWL MAKING A BAD SMELL. On the fridge there’s a torn-out picture of Michael Sheen looking sexy as Brian Clough. All the women of the house are enjoying how confusing this is.

2. Which childhood experience has had the biggest effect on your writing?

At the age of thirteen, through long and tortuous events too tedious to go into, I believed that I had brought about the downfall of my family, who were very poor, and in a precarious situation. For the first month after my indiscretion, I would run an answer the doorbell whenever it rang, believing that if it were the bailiffs, I might be able to simply talk them out of it, using my considerable charm, before my parents found out. When I realised that I might occasionally have to leave the house – thus leaving the entire family in peril – I decided I would simply have to earn enough money to save us all, so I started writing a minimum of 2000 words every day, until I’d finished a book. I couldn’t believe I’d finished a book at the age of fourteen! And then, when it was accepted for publication, I couldn’t believe that my desperate desire to save my family with a humourous childrens’ novel had succeeded! Then they told me I’d only get £1600 for it, and I realised I might need to switch to Plan B. Ponzi schemes.

3. Yesterday, Sonny and I explored a few back alleys in Grangetown with my camera, looking for peeling paint and arcane graffiti.
On one wall somebody had sprayed, in blue paint, ‘1996 The Year of Progressive House’. Is that how you remember that year?

I spent all of 1996 extremely stoned, in the first year of the relationship with the man who is now my husband. We became so indolent with marijuana that we used to lower a basket out of the window when the pizza-man came, so we didn’t have to go down two flights of stairs. He would put the pizzas and the change from £20 in the basket, and we would haul it back up again. As a consequence, 1996 was the year I became so fat I spent all summer wearing a nightie and a pair of Nike hi-tops, because I thought a chunky shoe would make my legs look thinner, by contrast.

4. In the style of Twitter (104 words max). What are you most afraid of?

The kind of insanity where you become very fat and shit yrself every time you make a joke.

5. Cheese or Chocolate?

CHEESE. This week - Comte. Waxy yet slightly crunchy, with salt crystals. And a celery-salt biscuit on the side. The Moran family is famous for having invented the dish “Cheese on Cheese.” It even has a theme-song (singing the words “cheese on cheese” to the tune of “Girls On Film” by Duran Duran.)

6. “Man, these things are instant imagination” Says Winston in Paul Beatty’s ‘Tuff’ as he polishes his gun on the stoop

Do you have a single muse or totem, an object/idea/memory/person that inspires all your work?

Yes. Russell Crowe in Master and Commander, shouting “Never mind the manouvres – just go straight at them!” Alan Coren’s advice: “The first idea that occurs to you, will have occurred to everyone. The second idea that occurs to you, will have already also occurred to the clever people. But your third idea – only you will have had that one.”

7. Your first book was published when you were only fifteen. You’re thirty four now , how is the second one coming on?

*pious face* I’ve written three of the most important stories of my life: my marriage, and the early years of my two children, Dora and Eavie. You cheeky fuck. Anyway I’m turning out pissing 5000 words a week for Rupert Murdoch – I haven’t got time to menstruate, let alone write a book. Get off my fucking back. Holy mother of God.

8. Ok, here’s your big shitty stick. Who you going to beat with it?

All the people Ben Goldacre is annoyed with in Bad Science. He seems to have researched their shitness very thoroughly.

9. What happens after we die?

When I was seven, I used to think you might get your own planet, and be God of it. Now I suspect you just rot in the ground like an old dog, but I haven’t told the kids yet. They think they’re off to Disneyland.

10. I think everybody is aware that it was totally your fault Kurt Cobain killed himself. What other pivotal roles have you played in era defining moments of popular culture?

I broke Brett Anderson’s toilet cistern.

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