Much of the fun has disappeared from the book pages with the death in January of Fay Weldon at 91.
Much of the fun has disappeared from the book pages with the death in January of Fay Weldon at 91.
For journalists, she was a gift, being prolific, playful and madly quotable – for four decades.
The archetypal north-London female novelist, with children underfoot – she said her sentences were short because she was constantly interrupted – she might open her door with ‘We have no coffee, or tea, or milk. So you’ll have to have wine [at 10am] or Cup-a-Soup.’
Sheer mischievousness impelled her to tell audiences she had not read her latest novel. ‘I wrote it, which is a different matter.’ If challenged for contradicting herself, she would reply, ‘But what I say is only a first draft.’
‘Did I write that?’ she’d often ask, with a tinkling laugh. Hearing one of her books read on Radio 4, she found herself thinking, ‘This is rather good.’
She marvelled that people ever took seriously her ever-changing aphorisms and overstatements.
‘I could make a case for anything,’ she’d say. ‘It’s my advertising background.’
Typically, she once fell into a coma and saw the pearly gates (‘orange and crimson – rather garish’). Latterly came psychic powers: she had advised a friend not to go on holiday ‘but she did, and the plane crashed’.
When she told this to a litfest audience in Cork, they laughed. ‘I protested, “But it’s a true story!” and they laughed even more.’
Her being fat made people kinder to her, she claimed. ‘A literary award? Oh, let her have that – she’s fat.’
Every obit quoted the most famous slogan she worked on – ‘Go to work on an egg’ – while the Old Un’s favourite was sadly vetoed: ‘Vodka makes you drunka quicka.’
