My favourite author or book
My answer to this will always and for ever be Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ and all the subsequent books chronicling the life of this much-maligned poet.
The book I’m reading
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami — it’s a book I half-read before I accidentally left it on the bar at a theatre. I’m always leaving books in places and having to re-buy — I’m the best sort of customer. I also regularly reread books in the bath and my current “bath book” is Jenny Eclair’s Older and Wider: A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause, because it’s as funny and wise as the woman herself.
The book I wish I had written
The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr. Who wouldn’t want to have written such a classic that is so much fun to read with a child?
The book I couldn’t finish
The Lord of the Rings. I tried and tried as a teen and never managed it. I’m not great with fantasy stories, sadly. I always feel I lost out in this way.
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I have a very old copy of it on my bookshelf and many times in my moments of youthful pretension I have pretended to have read it, but really, all I know about it is that someone has a picture in their attic that ages and so they don’t. I will read it. I will!
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My favourite film
An American Werewolf in London. I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen it — I never get bored of it. It’s a gorgeously gruesome piece of the 1980s and watching it comforts me.
My favourite play
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a musical about a young lad from Sheffield whose dad rejects him; he’s raised by his single mum and dreams of being a drag queen. It’s a joyous celebration of acceptance. I am a single mum too and her song He’s My Boy reduces me to a weeping mess every time.
The box set that I’m hooked on
Stranger Things is weird and spooky goodness.
My favourite TV series
Cobra Kai is a delicious gift! Karate Kid was a big deal to me as a child and Cobra Kai’s brilliant resurrection with the original characters, creating a ridiculous feud with all of the cartoonish violence, was a gloriously fun watch.
My favourite piece of music
Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence soothes my atheist soul like nothing else.
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The last song that made me cry
Bruce Springsteen’s There Goes My Miracle. I was driving when it came on the radio and I heard it for the first time. I had to pull over and sob my heart out. It made me think of my mother, who is very much still with me but I fear and dread the day she will no longer be because she is my miracle.
The lyric I wish I’d written
“I got holes in my lapel, rubbin’ shoulders with your girl,” from Stormzy’s Vossi Bop.
The poem that saved me
My son once asked me why me and his dad broke up. I gave him Wendy Cope’s Differences of Opinion. He said, “Ah. Got it.”
The instrument I play
Sadly none.
The instrument I wish I’d learnt
The piano, because you are never lonely when you play the piano, people always gather around you.
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The music that cheers me up
Pretty much anything from the Wonder Stuff gets me bouncing and cheery.
If I could own one painting it would be...
Not a painting, but the lyrics to Pulp’s Common People, scrawled by Jarvis Cocker as a favour to my mate Johnny Vegas who needed an emergency present for someone but ended up keeping it. That song features heavily in my new tour show It Was the 90s! as it embodies everything I felt about the world in my twenties, before I got too tired to be angry. I’d love to have such Jarvis memorabilia.
The place I feel happiest
On my giant, comfy red velvet sofa with my kids and the dog, eating pizza and watching TV and having a laugh together.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
I actually salivate if I find myself alone with Closer magazine.
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors...
Stormzy, Sue Townsend, Jarvis Cocker, Alison Moyet, Boy George and we would eat lovely food.
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And I’ll put on this music...
We’d sing Common People all together and spend the whole evening singing songs, being silly, and they would all promise to come to my Soho Theatre show this month so I can show off to everyone that they are my friends.
I wasted an evening listening to . . .
Morrissey at the Hammersmith Apollo. He looked and sounded like he would rather have been anywhere but in that room with his audience. I have never seen anyone so resolutely not enjoying themselves. I don’t know who forced him to do the show but I imagine he had sharp words with them afterwards: “You promised me an empty room! Who were all those fools?”
The film I walked out on
M — a German thriller made in 1931. I was on a date with a film buff who took me to see it. I cannot watch films where children are harmed in any way. Even if it is alluded to. In the first few minutes it’s clear that is what will happen and I walked out of the cinema and the poor guy was baffled. Since having children myself, I can’t watch and say, “Oh but it’s fiction.” They should have warnings for that sort of thing like they do with sex and violence. I’m still outraged that Slumdog Millionaire was billed as the “feelgood film of the decade” when a child in it is held down and deliberately blinded. I’m still not over that.
Overrated
I can’t, I’m sorry. Who am I to say someone else’s work isn’t up to scratch? I’m too much of a hippy. This question is bad vibes.
Underrated
Billy Bragg is loved of course as a political songwriter and activist but massively underrated as the writer of completely beautiful love songs.
Kissing Emma by Shappi Khorsandi is out now (Bellatrix, £7.99). Khorsandi will be touring the UK with her new show Shaparak Khorsandi: It Was the 90s! until April 2022
