One month to publication!

My mid-life crisis stand-up comedy memoir I Laughed, I Cried: How One Woman Took On Stand-Up and (Almost) Ruined Her Life is out one month today! Hurrah! 

To mark the countdown, Orion has released 10 copies for a giveaway on GoodReads.com. Click here to put your name in the hat. But hurry! The giveaway is only open until 10 June. And if you win, you are supposed to post a review on Goodreads (however short and however negative – it’s OK, I am used to heckling).

Other news so far: Last week it went in at No. 1 on Hot New Releases in Comedy on Amazon. Pick of the Month for June in The Bookseller. Best Non-Fiction Read in Good Housekeeping: “A seize-the-day memoir to inspire anyone with a long-held dream.” In the pages of their June issue I sit proudly alongside ANN WIDDECOMBE. Just as I happily would at any social function. I await your call, Ann. Bring Anton with you.

Queen bees at the school gate

Ah, don’t you just love the school gate? Writing in today’s Observer about “Queen Bee syndrome” and “mummy cliques” at drop-off and pick-up. I am not convinced Gill Hornby has nailed it in “most-hyped-novel-of-the-year” The Hive as (a) her critique seems a bit out-of-date (her kids are now in their late teens and early twenties and she is writing about primary school) and (b) what she writes about is so extreme it veers into caricature.

  This stuff is more incisive when it feels authentic. In real life someone really did tell me that one of my children’s “cognitive skills” were “crap.” But I don’t think it was a person who actually knew what “cognitive skills” are, so it was not very wounding. (What are “cognitive skills” anyway and who cares?) Anyhow. This is a major Mumsnet topic (over 11,000 threads on school gate etiquette alone) so if The Hive can gain currency with that demographic, it will do well. I will continue to monitor the situation in-between perusals of the Boden catalogue. (Joke. Boden is the caricature mummy clique’s label of choice.)

Much ado about body taboo

Writing in today’s Observer about taboo-busting women like Angelina Jolie and Romola Garai. Angelina Jolie has been hailed as “inspirational” for her decision to go public about her preventive double mastectomy and Romola Garai won plaudits from the audience at the BAFTAs when she “bravely and hilariously” mentioned her stitches after childbirth. I think these things reveal far more about how inherently conservative most people are. Is it really so shocking that someone would have a double mastectomy if they had a 87% chance of breast cancer? And every second of the day tens of thousands of post-natal women have stitches where the sun doesn’t shine. Anyway. They made headlines so it was reason enough to revisit all the other crazy taboos that have been busted over the years, from Demi’s pregnant belly to Julia’s hairy armpits.

Mugs, merchandising and “Mad Mel”

Looking into the new digital publishing world of Melanie Phillips for today’s Observer Profile. This week Melanie Phillips launched a very intriguing internet portal where she’s marketing herself and her world view to a global (read: American) audience. It’s the mugs, T-shirts and baseball caps that have brought her the most flak in the British press, but the far more interesting story is what this represents. I think we’ll see a lot more writers, commentators and opinion-formers using the internet to assert their influence abroad using the internet. And they will all be claiming — as Melanie Phillips is — that they and they alone are “Britain’s most influential political commentator.” Let the games begin!

Cruel to be kind: the rise of detached parenting

Writing in today’s Times (£) about the rise of detached parenting. There’s a backlash going on in the US, a reaction to the over-involved, wrap-you-up-in-cottonwool parenting of the 1990s and early 2000s. As I’ve tried to make clear in the piece, this isn’t about throwing all the good bits of attachment parenting out with the bathwater (no-one is saying that you shouldn’t breastfeed). But it is about wondering whether it’s a healthy thing for parents to overload children with activities, analysis and, consequently surely, massive expectations. (“How will they ever repay us?”) No-one wants selfish parents. But it’s not clear who a lot of the frenetic activity that goes on is really for. It is for the benefit of the parents or the children? More on detached parenting here. And a fascinating piece in the Huffington Post — Why I Choose Detachment Parenting – here.

Black and white baby pic: not one of mine — this is Alutka from Wikimedia Commons.

The woman behind the brand: Cath Kidston interview

This interview with Cath Kidston is in Red’s June issue. Really enjoyed meeting her: she seemed quite quiet and understated but a very straightforward sort of person. She did not say anything controversial and I don’t think she ever will. She has just spent the past twenty years quietly and discreetly building a £75 million empire. It is the British way.

Lionel Shriver’s new novel

I am mad about Lionel Shriver’s new novel Big Brother, out May 9. I’ve given it a very short review (because that’s all there was space for) in June issue of Red (coming soon) but was actually relieved not to review it at length elsewhere as there is a massive “spoiler” situation. It’s the sort of plot twist it would be very hard to review without mentioning. But it’s also something that if you mention it… you’ve totally ruined the reading experience for anyone else. Instead I have written this profile for The Observer which is all about the phenomenon of “Lionel Shriver”. I do think Shriver is judged in a certain way simply because she is a woman. Although people did love to tease Martin Amis about his teeth. So it’s hard to say. Either way, she’s a great honorary British eccentric and a truly great writer.

Happy birthday, I mean, Easter

Covering for Libby Purves in today’s Times, writing about the joy of Easter. Not that there aren’t niggles. The person who has commented that lie-ins are irritatingly compromised by the clocks going forward is right. And a curmudgeon, which I applaud. Otherwise, big up Easter. 

Wild child meets mild child

Interview with Amanda de Cadenet in this month’s Red magazine. Amanda was exactly as she seems in the interview. Open. Interested and interesting. Very LA in the way she talks and in the way she sees the world. I was half-expecting Gwynnie or Demi to phone her during our meeting — “Excuse me, Viv, I’ve just got to take this call” — but to my great distress this did not happen. Good luck to her and her Conversation (her on-line talk show — which is actually good and has extraordinary guests like The Gaga.)

Column: Latte money, Europe and The Beast

Covering for Rachel Johnson in today’s Mail on Sunday: stay-at-home mothers, respect and latte money (yes, we should value what they do — but the real question is how to help the women who want to work stay in work); the disturbingly slim win of Nigel Farage at this week’s Intelligence Squared debate (it only takes one per cent and we’re out of Europe); and what’s more stupid — someone who puts petrol in Obama’s diesel limo, The Beast, OR a woman who crashes her car into a wall in a multi-storey car park? Don’t answer that. Because the woman is me.