GI
Shirl's Girls. Shirley Temple-Bar has a cup of tea and a chin-wag with
her favourite Irish icons
You couldn't make it up. An attempted suicide after years of alcoholism.
Kicking the
habit and writing a best-selling novel. Then following it with several more.
Marian Keyes is basing her next novel on my turbulent life, but even though
I'm genuinely flattered, I think she'd be much better basing it totally on
her own experiences. But, nevertheless, she insists on following me around
night and day, taking notes, interviewing my ex-fellas, and asking all sorts
of awkward questions about the gold medal I won fair and square in the 1997
Community Games gymnastics finals, just after my toughest opponent Shirley
Smithfield-Village broke both of her legs in six places when her swan-boat
accidentally sank in the Mosney lake.
Recently I found Marian in our kitchen, poring over the family photo albums
with me Ma, exclaiming about how much like a boy I looked when I was a
toddler -and I finally cracked. I wrenched the dictaphone oout of her hands,
pressed the record button and finally turned the tables on my tormentor. She
nearly died, but gave in graciously (as is her wont). For legal reasons I
have to tell you I sold the transcript of our interview to Poolbeg Press
last Monday, who are giving me a six-figure, three-book deal, but they've
agreed to allow GI to publish the following extract.
Read on and weep.
-Marian, you seem to have a new book the size of -the Bible, testaments one
and two, out everysecond Tuesday. How the fuck do you do it girlfriend?
Actually, I'm much slower than lots of other people that have been published
in the same field. I see they have another book out and I'm only in the
middle of my next one and I'm raging!
-I'm not casting dispersions, but some English newspapers say you robbed all
your ideas off
your one who wrote Bridget Jones' Diary.
It would probably make a much better story if I did, but I was on my third
book when she wrote her first. I think she rocks, though. I used to read her
columns years ago.
-So what are the differences between your stuff and hers?
I think there's a lot-more depth to my writing. l'll be kiIIed for saying
that! Hers is a comic masterpiece but there's not a lot of pathos in it.
-At least she doesn't make a joke out of terrible things happening to the
people in her books,Marian.
That's the way I am. I've always been able to have a laugh even when things
are ferocious.
Laughing in the face of diversity. That's what fat people do. And gay
people. And especially fat, gay people. It's because it's tough to be gay.
Laughing becomes a survival tool.
-Have you ever put a gay character through the shits?
God, yes! In Last Chance Saloon the main gay character becomes sick and
everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's the 'virus'. But it's actually
Hodgkin's disease, which has very similar symptoms. His illness is the pivot
fur lots of the characters to change. And in Lucy Sullivan is Getting
Married, Lucy and her best friend, Denis, fight over the same man.
-So are your gay characters based on real, live,-self-confessed homosexuals?
A lot of my friends are gay and I am very steeped in the gay sensibility!
When I first moved to London, I lived with some gay friends in a squat on
the 21st floor of a tower block in Stoke Newington.
-Oh, how fabulous!
It was! We never had a penny and it didn't matter. It was the only time in
my life that I ever took speed in any kind of proper quantities.
-Ah, Marian, speed is sucb a skanky drug.
Oh, I know. I'd wake up with the really bad horrors thinking about jumping
out of the 21st floor if I could only get myself out of the bed.
-You were lucky, my bedroom is on the ground floor.
It was great! For a short period of time, it was the life. We used to get up
at six in the evening and all we used to eat was Jaffa cakes and toast and
Dairylea. And sometimes we'd have a mad fit and go and steal a bit of
chicken from the local supermarket.
-Do you ever get sick talking about your mad days at the bottom of a
bottle?
Well, I think there's a lot more to me than that. At the same time, it is
definitely one of the most important things that ever happened to me so, of
course, I am going to write about it. It gets a bit tedious when
interviewers ask, "How much did you drink?" or "How
bad were you?"
-So, Marian, how much did you drink and how bad were you?
I spent years in denial. They say that every alcoholic spends years trying
to stop drinking but that was not me. I had spent years trying to stay
drinking, so when the gig was finally up, I came to terms with it very fast.
-Do you think your alcoholism might have something to do with the fact that
you were born in Limerick?
Sure, my head was barely out and we moved to Cork. And we moved to Dublin
when I was eleven.
-Did you ever go to see a Shrink?
Millions! Would you stop! From the age of three I always thought something
happened to me. Like I was adopted. I used to beg my parents to tell me what
it was. They were like, 'Would you get lost.You look like us. You're not
adopted'. Then after some other terrible thing had happened, I'd buy all
these self-help books and finally I went to see all these shrinks. But I
never had any money so I had to go to crappy ones that were still learning.
-Now that you don't drink, what's your biggest weakness?
I have so many! I am very fond of confectionery of every kind. Chocolate.
Marks and Spencer Wine Gums. I regard myself as an authority on all new
sweets. If I don't recognise the packaging, I lose it. 'What's going on?
When did that come out? Why wasn't I told?'
-Who are your idols?
That's hard. I love Jilly Cooper and Laurie Graham. "
And my sister, Caitriona. She lives in New York. She's hilarious. Oh, and I
love Sex in the City. It's my favourite.
-When you're finished writing my unauthorised autobiography, will you go
back to fiction?
I'm half way through a new novel set in the publishing world, Shirley. And a
few of my books are being adapted for film and television.
-And now for the science bit: What makes a typical Marian Keyes' heroine?
Well, obviously she's fabulous. That's where you come in! She's a 21st
century Irish woman apart from the ones that are foreign.
-Just like the Rose of Tralee, yeah?
Absolutely! She always looks fabulous except for the days that she looks
dishevelled, but even then she's fabulously dishevelled. And she always gets
her man.
-Always? I like the sound of that.
Well, she always gets some man and if she doesn't, she's better off.
-What kind of men do you go for, yourself?
I have always had a soft spot for Keanu Reeves and Harrison Ford, but I
don't get Brad Pitt. I think he looks a bit like a hamster.
-Are you sure you're not still drinking, Marian?
Yes Shirley, I'm sure.