Sucking Watermelons
Chances are, as you read this, there's a brand new lime green Beetle tearing around Dublin, pink furry dice bobbing on the mirror and a nodding dog making other motorists grin.
This is the motor belonging to the quirky, cute and immensely funny Marian Keyes, author of five bestselling chick books, namely Watermelon, Rachel's Holiday, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Last Chance Saloon, and the latest bestseller, Sushi for Beginners.
Her books have regaled legions of ladies and their loo-reading menfolk with the hilarity and heartbreak of youngish, nuttyish but always undeniably likeable heroines and their accompanying packs of gay friends, bitchy friends, back-stabbing friends, pious friends and best friends. Then there are extended Irishesque families, sexy underwear, bad boys, shoe fetishes and drunkenness to add to the fray.
It's easy to see that much of Marian's inspiration comes from her very core for she's one of her books personified - after all, her favourite item is a Kate Spade handbag - perhaps minus a few of the hang ups, but with a healthy attitude towards having a good laff, a good bit of Irish cracic.
She has her vices, she's the first to admit:
And parking her babe bug drives her to distraction.
This only when pulling into a bay - she has yet to parallel park successfully!
Marian jumps for joy over foot massages and goes into raptures about citrusy shower gels and body lotions.
She's recently discovered the hedonism of gel nails, after an August tour to America "where everyone has their nails done."
Her own raggedy fingertips were transformed, and there's been no looking back.
She has no eating hang-ups and no gym pretensions, describing herself as
She keeps this figure in full curve with relaxing dates with "Bed, book, box of Maltesers."
But Marian also has a quiet history, a tale of hitting "Middle class rock bottom," as she candidly calls her alcoholism.
It seems Marian, law degree under her belt yet no wish to become a lawyer, decided to become a London waitress.
Partying, living on the dole and serving drinks took its toll, and Marian's family was soon crying for her to come back home, to sort herself out. In 1994 she even attempted suicide before going into rehab. She hasn't touched alcohol since.
Some of her experience may be reflected in Rachel's Holiday, she admits, which is an hilarious, tear-jerking walk with a druggie on the road to rehabilitation. There's even a suicide attempt, but Marian says she most closely associates with the title character in Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married.
Watermelon was her first book, written for two hours each day before work and sucked straight out of her thumb.
At the time she was an accounts clerk, starting work at 10 am each day. She comes in two hours early to tap out the story in her head.
This continued for nine months while the story, based on nothing she knew, wormed its way out of her imagination.
Even after Watermelon's success, this brunette kept on accounting way into the writing of her third book.
Now, at 38, Marian is blissfully happy. She's been married to computer boff Tony Baines for five-and-a-half years, and has even convinced him to quit work and take over the mammoth admin task of keeping her papers in order.
They live in the upmarket suburb of DunLaoghaire within minutes of her fabulous parents - an accountant Dad and housewife Mum. There are a smattering of siblings too.
Tony's minding of Marian's matters means they get to travel the world together on book tours, but he's also a domestic life-line.
In fact, she "never ever" cooks, believing "life's too short," she laughs.
I'm liking this woman - she's my modern pin-up gal, with curves, brains, a past and oodles of humour.
Her lack of domesticity is not surprising really, as she rigidly writes "Five days a week for eight hours a day," adding "If I waited for inspiration, an awful lot of television might get watched...I think inspiration is more likely to strike if you're ready to catch it."
Marian will even write prior to getting out of bed in the morning, kick-starting the creative juices before the fear of failure has time to bounce its self-doubting way in. "There's no secret to writing books," she tells candidly, admitting that even she doesn't know the plot until it unfolds as she writes. Then the conclusion pops up unexpectedly in her head.
She never writes with publishing in mind though, believing this lack of thought over what people will think lends honest to the cooky characters she dreams up. This honesty, being able to articulate the shameful thoughts we all harbour but think we're the only person who has them is the secret of her success.
Selling around five million copies is, it seems, the proverbial cherry.
Good news for fans is that Marian's goal is to "write more books."
Even better is that two are already en route: we can expect a collection of humorous autobiographical pieces called Under the Duvet just in time for Christmas and then the next novel, Angels, is on track for around next September. Just in time for Virgo Marian's thirty-ninth birthday.
"It's a real chick mobile says its proud owner, Handcream and sweets in the glove compartment ... all I need now is manicurist on the back seat."
"Chocolate and shoes."
"I can spend half-an-hour trying to improve and it still looks as bad, so I've just given up."
"Very short and a classical pear shape."
"It was something I was born with - I had very low self-esteem and it came to a head when I was 30," she tells.
"I used to go to tarot readers a lot," says Marian, just as her Lucy does.
"I think it's what unhappy people do." then she laughs:
"Touch wood and everything, they get me so wrong every time."
"Tony does most of the grocery shopping but sometimes, for a treat, I go.
I don't get out much!"
"Tony cooks sometimes but mostly we get by on take-aways and vitamin pills."
"All you do is put one word in front of the other. Very boring, I know, but that's how it gets done."
"I'm proud of my books: I think they're great fun; I write them for myself."