Kat Brown Freelance Journalist

Post archive

You want me to do what?

On Sunday, I was a lay preacher in church. (Please try not to laugh too hard, my parents almost bit their lips off when I told them this was happening.)

The vicar pounced on me before Eucharist a couple of months ago.

"I'm going to ask you something very scary," he said. Hum, I thought, I've faced Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link. Unless this involves standing up in front of an entire church, this really isn't going to faze me.

"Will you do a sermon for us at Evensong?"

Ahahahahaha.

Ten seconds later I found that I was saying, as I do to pretty much anything my utterly charming vicar asks, that I'd be thrilled.

Of course I thought it was bonkers to ask me. I only got confirmed a few months ago, and spent so much of my classes being deeply annoyed by Leviticus that I'm amazed I was welcomed so warmly. To me, Preacher is a graphic novel, not a description of myself. Moreover, this was my first time at Evensong full stop.

I found writing my sermon incredibly difficult, not least because everytime the word 'sermon' popped into my head, I turned pale and had to have a bit of a lie down. A lay preacher is not a member of the clergy, I knew that much, but the very idea of preaching at anyone made me feel worried. I have absolutely no struggles with my faith, but quite a lot with religion. How could I be honest with myself and the congregation, without offending anyone?

As it stands, it went pretty well. I made someone cry, and not with rage. And lots of people said it was "interesting", which either means it genuinely was interesting, or they are far too polite to call me a hideous infidel in public. To my horror, the vicar made me stand at the door and greet people as they left the church - "The preacher always stands there, Kat."

Here goes, anyway. I hope you find it "interesting."

For reference, the Evensong readings were Ezra 3:1-13 and Ephesians 2:11-22. Joe, Penny and Eileen are the clergy at my church, All Saints Fulham.

As someone who spends much of the working week bashing out words on demand, I’ve been flabbergasted at how hard this kind of writing actually is. I’ve no idea how Penny, Joe and Eileen manage it on a weekly, if not more frequent basis, and I can only hope that they have some kind of magical machine hidden in the vestry to help them.

Part of the problem is being given a blank piece of paper and told that you can write anything. Hideous! Many of us are so used to working to a brief, be it from a boss, from a client, or from a parent, that being able to just do anything can be incredibly unnerving. With so many directions you could take, there’s always the risk that you just panic and, ultimately, stand still.

In church, I have been given the same blank piece of paper. I was confirmed here at All Saints in November, and while there’s a lot of freedom and comfort in having chosen your own time to get confirmed, and knowing it’s the right time for you, it’s also slightly terrifying. What on earth do you do now? You’re a grown up, so you can think for yourself. You’ve got the 10 Commandments down pat. But how do you behave? Is there a sea change that should follow? What should you do, when you’ve already built your own, slightly wonky way of including God in your life?

After confirmation, my friends and godparents gave me helpful books on prayer and inspirational church figures. One friend, the son of a minister, said that instead of reading the paper on his 90 minute commute to London each day, he uses the time to reflect and to pray. I felt half impressed, and half massively intimidated. Who am I to spend 90 minutes talking to God? And what to say, when I’ve spent 18 years just saying small prayers whenever I’ve gone into a church to think.

In the Bible of course, everyone’s talking to God, all the time. A lot of phrases from today’s readings ring very true for me. In Ephesians, those who were separate from Christ are brought near by his blood – at communion, at confirmation. I’m not a particularly humble person by nature. But I found my first communion, being brought near to Christ through blood, so humbling that I promptly burst into tears. The most vivid recollection I have of that day, other than hastily trying to mop up tear drops from the altar with my sleeve as Joe grinned at me, was of feeling quite overwhelmed by a feeling I still haven’t quite figured out yet. Being far away, and brought in, as it’s put – I found that incredibly moving. The first notch on my blank piece of paper.

In Ezra, the Israelites sacrifice burnt offerings to God. When I was thinking about rejoining the church, about wondering whether I would be welcome after so many years hovering on the fringes, it felt very much as though all I had to offer God were ‘burnt offerings’. My faith was there, but it came with a large helping of cynicism, suspicion and wariness from seeing how religion has often been interpreted in the modern world.

But despite fearing those around them, the Israelites build their altar. Most Christians now have less to fear, facing instead the scorn of the scientific and the impact from those who would use the Bible as a weapon. I wouldn’t say I feared the reaction of people when I told them I was getting confirmed, despite the faith-atheist impasse, but certainly enquiries from friends, from Twitter and commenters on the confirmation blog I wrote for The Times, bordered on the incredulous.

“Have you found God?” was a common one, often said in the careful manner of one approaching a lunatic.

“No,” I replied, “I never lost him. I just know myself better now.”

The reason I knew that I was finally ready to get confirmed was when I could say, quite happily, that I knew God, and that simply wasn’t going to change whether people thought I was too religious, or not religious enough.

I say not enough, because last year I really wasn’t expecting to come to church at all. My faith was something between me and God, wherever I happened to be, and so I’d planned that after my communion this would continue along much the same lines. Yet slowly, very slowly, my blank piece of paper is filling up like a faint sketch. I still have my old routine of going into churches outside of service hours and saying a prayer or lighting a candle. But there are new lines being pencilled in. Actually going to church services, that aren’t just Christmas or Easter, and meeting amazing people. Suddenly realising you know how all the sung parts go. Realising what a variety of information there is out there – the Barefoot Disciple was an eye-opener on humility. Reading every faith story that comes into the news desk at work with a new degree of interest. I spent four years in a university city with one of Britain's most beautiful cathedrals, yet this is my first Evensong.

At confirmation something really fell into place for me. I feel that every time I come to a service here. And there are coincidences that almost seem like fate. The fact that, when I looked on the All Saints website out of interest, there was a confirmation class starting that very week. That Penny served at the church my family attended before we left London nearly 20 years ago and had been at university with my dad before that. That I was brought here by a great man, who would also have raised an eye brow at seeing me here.

I wonder if this way of doing things, of tracing things out on my blank piece of paper, before rubbing them out and trying again, will lead to a fine picture, or a terrific mess. But if you had told me five years ago that I would be standing here, in this glorious church, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me I would be at a church service, I wouldn’t have believed you either.

At church, our sins are forgiven and we can start the week afresh. It’s up to us what we do with that blank slate and where we go with it. But then, each week, we confirm our belief in God with other people, and that blank piece of paper starts to look a little more defined.

The amazing story of Paralympic medallist Arnie Chan.

I've been very lucky to interview some absolutely incredible British athletes as part of a project for the Olympics. The story that stands out most, is that of the table tennis Paralympian Arnie Chan, who was sadly cut from the Team 2012 squad this week.

Arnie Chan - picture from www.paralympics.org

A man who takes unassuming to new levels, when I met Chan I initally thought he was a very tough interviewee. He didn't open up much and didn't seem tremendously passionate about his sport - clearly, I was getting massively lazy - then he suddenly dropped a series of jaw-dropping facts as if they were nothing.

Chan played the sport for 30 years, playing in his very first Games within two months of picking up a bat. He has won a cluster of team and individual golds during his career and competed at six Paralympic Games, winning team and individual bronze medals at Seoul and Barcelona.

The double Paralympic medallist’s brother accidentally shot him with their father’s gun during a game of hide and seek in their native Vietnam, leaving Arnie paralysed.

Airlifted to Britain, Arnie exchanged letters with his family for seven years until they had to call it off, unable to afford the cost of translation. He hasn’t spoken to or seen his family since, can’t remember any Vietnamese, and has twice turned down the chance to marry in favour of sport.

This is an abbreviated version of our interview, covering tattoos, marriage and that love of sport I'd initially - stupidly! - thought was missing. I hope you will find Arnie as interesting as I did and raise a glass to his astonishing Paralympic career.

What inspired you to take up table tennis?

I was in hospital and I had nothing to do. I took up seven sports, to see which one I liked, and I think table tennis won because I was offered to play for Great Britain. I was sent to the first tournament, and within two months, I was in the first Games. I wasn’t nervous, I thought: “This is fantastic!”

Did you have a mentor, or anybody looking after you, in your first few months playing?

No, what happened was, when I got asked to join the GB team, and then, when I left the hospital, I started going to the youth club, and playing down there with my mates, because we were all the same level, and then I just started training on my own, I didn’t have a coach or anything.

But not quite against a wall, Forrest Gump style?

No, no (laughs), not that good!

What would it mean to you to play in the 2012 Olympics?

I think a lot, because it’s my home town.

How would it feel playing in Britain, as opposed to abroad? What’s the atmosphere like?

I think it’ll be more pressure. You’re playing in front of your families as well. When you’re abroad, like in Beijing, it’s a long way for families to travel.

Some other athletes said they found Beijing really stressful, because the crowd was just making so much noise.

I enjoy that atmosphere. Beijing was brilliant, because for table tennis, you don’t get big crowds all the time. So when you get big crowds in Beijing, because their national sport is table tennis, it’s fantastic. You’ve just got to hear them! And to me, that inspires you. Some people don’t like big crowds, but me, I just shut it off.

What do you do when you’re not training and playing table tennis?

My other hobby’s playing poker. I love playing. In Athens (2004 Paralympics), that’s what we were playing every day, because there was nothing else to do. It was awful for wheelchairs. We didn’t go out, we were just stuck in the village. It was so boring that’s the only thing we could do, was play poker.

Yeah, because say, if you go to the European Championship, it’s only your sport. Whereas with the Paralympics, it’s every sport, so you get to meet other athletes. That’s why the Paralympics is like the ultimate. That’s your ultimate goal.

Are your family into table tennis as well?

No, my family is not here. Originally I was from Vietnam. I think because of my accent I got sent over here, and then I lost contact with them.

Why did you get sent over to Britain?

Because I got shot.

Really? What happened?

Yeah. My brother shot me.

What?

It was an accident.

Oh, yes, they all say that. Seriously, how did that happen?

I was a little boy. I had the accident when I was young. And I think he was only about 6 and I was 7, and we were playing hide and seek. I was hiding at the time, and because I was hiding behind a cupboard, I couldn’t move, you see? My dad was in the army, because you know at the time it was the Vietnam war, and the Americans were on our side, so dad carried a gun with him, but he forgot to lock it up. So my brother picked it up, he thought it was a toy, I could see him, but I couldn’t stop.

Because you were stuck behind the cupboard?

Yep.

So how long was it until you saw your family again?

I haven’t.

Still not?

I kept in contact for a bit, because at the time I could speak French, and I used to write letters home in French, and they had to pay a translator to translate back to Vietnamese, and it cost a lot of money, and the last letter said they couldn’t afford to keep translating back, so I stopped writing.

And when was that?

That was when I was 14, so we’re talking about 40-odd years ago. I think at the time, because I was living a new life, I didn’t think about it much, but I wish I’d kept in contact with them.

Is that something that you could pick up again or would it just be hard?

No, the thing is it’s hard, because I’ve forgotten all their names.

Really?

Honestly. You know, I can’t even think of one word in my own language. I can’t speak one word.

Would you be tempted to learn again?

No, I’ve been living in England such a long time now. I got British citizenship about three or four years ago, so I keep thinking I’m still Vietnamese, but I’m a British citizen.

[Arnie has some very faded-looking tattoos on his arms, words, some birds and a tiger]

How long have you had the tattoos?

I’ve had these for a long time. [points at the words] I think that’s the first one, when I was about 16. I was going out with someone at the time, and I got her name.

What does it say?

That’s supposed to be ‘Arn’, they missed the ‘ie’ off. And that’s her nickname. I think I’ll get some new ones. On dark skin they don’t go for colours, now, they go just for black.

You mean like a full sleeve?

No, I don’t mean all black, I mean the black markings, like the gangs.

Right. Sorry, I can’t get over the fact you were shot by your brother.

I think, looking back, if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be here. I think I would have joined the army, because I wanted to join the army, so I might not be alive. So, in a way, it’s a blessing that I had my accident. You can look at it that way. It gave me a second chance in life.

What’s your role in the team when you all go off to do tournaments and you are in the team? Because there are obviously some really young people on the team and you’ve got 30 years behind you.

I try and give advice to the best I can – to try not to do things that I used to do! At the time, when I played, we didn’t have all this. Now they’ve got sport psychologists, they’ve got all the support staff. When I played, you didn’t have all that sort of thing.

What, was it literally just the coach and the team?

Yeah. And all the training was all down to yourself.

If you were a young player starting now, how do you think it would have varied?

I think I would achieve more.

Well, it seems like you’ve done amazingly well already.

Yeah, I’m proud of my career.

Is there anything you would do differently?

I had the chance to get married a couple of times. I turned it down, because of table tennis.

But you think you would have got married?

I think I should have done. But I put table tennis first, you see.

Well, ‘should’ and ‘wanted to’ are different things.

Yeah. I’m sure you could work on both, but I didn’t want both, I only wanted one. The problem was, you had to find someone who would accept your sport as well.

The Pampers kitten: a happy ending!

It's the afternoon and thus the perfect time for a cat-related story!

Do you remember the story of the Pampers kitten? I worry about you if you don't as it only happened last week. Catch up here.

Well, there is some very good news in that the little thing has now got a lovely non-rubbish dump-based home - and not where I was expecting either.

This from Ash: "The vet went very well – purrfect bill of health. I also found out that it is 5 months old and a boy! Also, after a lot of deliberation I have decided to keep him. We have bonded over the last 10 days and he has now basically taken over the house. Plus he broke a lamp yesterday so he needs to stay until he can pay that back!"

So the little girl who is, in fact, a boy has settled in very happily chez Ash. He's called Parker and here he his owning his property. Adorable!

Parker the Pampers cat - king of the fence

Thank you to everyone who RT'd, Facebooked and sorry to those who fell in love with him but who got sideswiped by Ash realising that what he really needed in his life was a little kitten with a penchant for interior destruction.

Can you help rehome the Pampers kitten?

I adore cats. Unfortunately, I don't think my landlord does, and I live right next to a road, which is why I'm asking for your help to find a home for this absolutely beautiful tabby kitten, who is currently staying with my colleague, Ash in London.

Isn't she cute! Can you help find her a home?

Ash found her taped up in a Pampers box in a pile of rubbish in the street last Tuesday. What a fucking horrible thing to do to an animal. Is taking the Tube to Battersea really that hard?

She's apparently really friendly, but she can't stay with Ash so he's looking for a home for her quite quickly.

Isn't she cute! Can you help find her a home?

He thinks she is less than a year old. She's going to the vet's on Saturday for a check up, so once she's been looked over, the next step is to find her a home who will adore her - and not put her in a bloody box hoping she'll die.

If you can give this little kitten a really lovely home, or know someone who can, PLEASE email me and I will pass on genuine enquiries to Ash. If you can't, please RT this post on Twitter, or Facebook, and to other animal lovers.

Thank you for reading, now let's find her an upgrade on a nappy box. I'll post an update once she's got a new home!

KITTEN UPDATE - 16/02/11 8pm
Well done the internet! Some very nice, non-mad sounding people have emailed in serious offers for her, vet's visit pending. But it's not signed and sealed yet, so let's hope the vet gives her the ok and one of them can give her a good home and a ridiculous amount of cosseting.

KITTEN UPDATES - 21/02/11 2PM
The kitten is re-homed! And not where I was expecting...

Juliet Shaw vs the Daily Mail

I know I should have long given up on being appalled by anything the Daily Mail do, but this takes the biscuit, the cheese and the whole sodding barrel. Their lawyers, particularly.

No Sleep 'Til Brooklands (blog): A True Story of Daily Mail Lies

This is a story written by Juliet Shaw. In 2003, she replied to a journalist request on Response Source asking for people who had left the city to move to the country. Her story, and that of the other women interviewed, was re-written, often reimagined and turned into a story about Sex and the City.

“Sex & the Country – What happened when four singletons, fed up with shallow urban lives, upped sticks in a quest for rural romance?”

Shallow urban lives? I didn’t have a shallow urban life. I had two children and a career. I’d just been through a very traumatic relationship breakdown and a period of severe depression. And I certainly didn’t force my children to move 100 miles in a ‘quest for rural romance’. I wanted a better life for us all, away from a situation that had caused me immense distress.

When Juliet decided to challenge the Mail about this, they closed the case almost immediately. When she decided this wasn't good enough, she took it to court. Once it looked like the judge was on her side, she received a call from the Daily Mail's lawyers:

While I was considering my position, I received a call from the senior partner in the law firm representing Associated Newspapers. He ever so kindly pointed out that trials cost lots and lots of money, and it would be such a shame if they were forced to take my house off me were I to lose such a complicated case. I pointed out my house was rented and I had nothing to lose. He then very sympathetically informed me it would be just horrid if they had to take my business assets in order to recover their costs should the outcome of the trial not be favourable for me. I thanked him for his concern, and pointed out that as a freelance working from home, my only asset was my brain and I was more than happy to put it to good use fighting my claim to the end, whatever the outcome.

Isn't that disgusting? Sorry to sound incredibly naive, but seriously: that's like something out of a film. Jesus.

I'd really recommend reading the whole of Juliet's piece. Especially if you are a real-life journalist at the Daily Mail.

Bluffers guide to The Archers SATTC episode

For the last eight years, I've been absolutely nutso for The Archers, Radio 4's six-daily soap about, well, not very much usually.

New Years Day 2011 sees the show, based around a farming community, celebrate its diamond jubilee, but as Saturday's the one day it doesn't air, January 2 is the big one. We're promised a double-length episode that will "shake Ambridge to the core" (#sattc on Twitter), so if you've never listened to it before, that's worth a listen, if only because the most annoying character in the history of radio stands a fairly decent chance of snuffing it.

Here's my short beginner's guide to what to expect. If you really want to do research in advance, there's the omnibus on Radio 4 at 10am, followed on BBC by classic clips with comment from the cast. Hoorah!

[intro music] DUH-DER-DUH-DER-DUH-DER-DUH DUH-DER-DUH-DER-DUH-DUH DUH-DER-DUH-DER-DUH-DER-DUH DUH-DER-DEEDLE-EE-DEE...

Somewhere in the West Country’s fictional county of Borsetshire lies Ambridge: a sleepy farming community with a sprinkling of hay thieves, civil partnerships, murders, racism and marmalade competitions, presided over by the posh (Archers, Aldridges) and un-posh (Grundys, Carters) and populated by the in-between.

Happily for those planning a one-off visit, 2010 has seen a clutch of awful characters flourish in Ambridge, all gifted with the tact and social skills of a blind rhinoceros careering into a primary school.

Top to watch is martyred Helen Archer, who despite having a series of tragic storylines thrown at her over the years, is top of every fan’s hate list. Now pregnant via sperm donor at 30, the ghastly “Hellin” is busy alienating even more of her family, while listeners cheerfully imagine her death by car crash, childbirth or angry mob.

There’s also Kathy Perks, whose appalling parenting and relationship skills make her hot favourite to be pushed into a ditch and left there; and Marshal of Compulsory Fun, Lynda Snell, a social cockroach who could survive a plane crash unscathed. In the event that they don’t peg it, insufferable teenager Pip Archer – handily, also due to take her driving test, hopefully on a slippery road – is waiting annoyingly in the wings.

And what of the Ambridge mob. Implausibly nice milkman Harry has definite serial killer potential, most likely against his partying flatmate Jazzer McCreary but there’s still time to fit in a new year kiss with comely barmaid Fallon Rogers before he explodes.

Elsewhere, brothers Ed and Will Grundy’s 10-year feud over sweet-but-slutty Emma Carter (mother to Will’s son, pregnant with Ed’s baby) is expected to come to a bloody head.

Will fretful aristos Elizabeth and Nigel Pargetter’s worries about getting their children into private school be put paid by Lizzie’s dicky heart or Nigel falling off the roof? Will the village finally rise up against the annual onslaught of Lynda Snell’s pantomime? So many questions, and one glorious 30 minute episode to answer them.

The Archers is on Radio 4 at 7pm on January 2. Be there or, you know, catch it on iPlayer later.

Crap illnesses with crapper names

It’s been both my fortune and my misfortune in life to only ever have crap illnesses.

I had petit mal epilepsy for five years. Not that anyone wants to have grand mal epilepsy, but this is its infinitely less interesting brother, where fits involve you completely blanking out. It’s like time fast forwards and you’re the only person who realises this, except you don’t realise you’ve just missed the chunk of time.

Sample fit:

Put hand up in year 7 RS class: “I have a question.”

Put hand down. Stares blankly. Entire class stares. No question is asked. This is but the first step in your being considered weird and freakish for years after.

Fit two:

In the middle of Grade 2 piano exam. You’re playing something probably called The Merry Tinker, stop, and sit there relieved and think you’ve finished it. Scrape a merit: disappointing.

Fit three:

Walking across a road. Petit mal is so pointless that you can have a fit while walking across a road and the only thing that will happen is that your mother will tell you off for ignoring her question.

The only cool thing about having petit mal was that once I got to have wires attached to my head with wax. Actually, getting that wax out of my hair was a bloody nightmare, so that’s not even a cool thing.

Overlapping with the petit mal, was depression, an illness with arguably the worst name ever. It sounds like a trifle, or a slightly overweight aunt sulking in a department store bedroom section. Nobody takes depression seriously: just when people started knowing what the hell it actually was, the emos took over, so that being suicidal became a lifestyle choice. It also hit at a time when I was either a teenager or a student, so my not being able to sleep until 4am and subsequently not being able to get out of bed til 10am were cunningly disguised as chronic laziness.

(Actually, I remember one charming incident of standing round at a party with three people discussing the tools we used for cutting our arms, which pre-dated emo by a good two years. Fail.)

And then of course, there’s SAD (seasonal affective disorder), which I've had for so long that for ages I couldn't see where depression began and this ended. It isn’t even really an illness because treating it requires purchasing a lamp that costs up to FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS. Even pills that cost £90 to make only cost you £7.50 on the NHS. The most doctorly connection that SAD has to actual medical practise is that sometimes you can claim the VAT back on the lamp. Or they’ll prescribe you an anti-depressant, which doesn’t actually treat any part of the SAD unless you get depressed from it, but expensive pills are apparently better than extremely expensive lamps.

I don’t get SAD as often as I used to, it’s now mostly limited to a few afternoons every now and then, but when I do, I feel like someone is slowly spooning my brain out through my eyes and winding my IQ down to 15. There’s – bear with me, it really does feel like this – a silent buzzing in my head, like it's quietly replacing my capacity to think, to function, with white noise.

This afternoon is one of those times. It’s a maddening feeling because your brain, which hopefully is used to working quite quickly and working your way through lots of different processes, turns into the Elephant Parade from the Jungle Book cartoon: One thought, single file, with maybe one small thought trying to tag onto the end and failing for comic effect.

I’m very grateful for the general state of my health. I’d just really appreciate a very expensive lamp, too.

Times confirmation diary - week one

UPDATE: All of the diaries are finished and up at www.thetimes.co.uk/confirmationdiary

I’ve got a horrendous attack of the new-schools as I get off the train and head to my first class. I haven’t returned to the area since Ben’s memorial service 18 months ago, and as I walk into the church hall I feel shy and incredibly awkward. Am I religious enough? Is it allowed that I think a lot of the Bible is bunk? Is my outfit even vaguely appropriate? Are my reasons for doing this as valid as everyone else’s? Will they let me join in, or will I get that teenage feeling of being “unsuitable” again. Argh.

I’m planning to write to Ben’s mother afterwards about getting confirmed through her church. For the moment, it feels a bit odd, like I’m sneaking into her garden and pitching a tent. Ben wasn’t remotely religious himself, although he did a lot of volunteering for Festival Samaritans. He was, however, one of those people who is just so good that it makes you roll your eyes when pursed-lipped inflexibles go on about how only people who’ve accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and saviour get to have a pop at the Pearly Gates.

The cheery deacon – one of three clergy, we’re either spoiled or need wrangling – offers me some wine which makes me brighten up considerably and I start small-talking to the others. Most are women, probably aged between 30 and 50. (There’s only one man here which is interesting – do men get confirmed earlier, I wonder? Is spiritual obstinacy restricted to women? Please don’t say Eat Pray Love had a point.) All, naturally enough, are from the church’s congregation. Not having been near a church service in months, let alone in this parish, I’m hotly aware of my failure on that point and this makes me play up to the crowd. I’m soon explaining my interloper-from-Lambeth status with the mannerisms of a sub-par birthday clown [Read more]

More Jilly Cooper!

Oh as if I could possibly go a fortnight without writing about Jilly Cooper again. This time, it's a bar review of the St Pancras Grand for the Sunday Times Style.

Where did you go?
St Pancras Grand, Upper Concourse, St Pancras International, Euston Road, N1C 4QL; 020 7870 9900, searcys.co.uk

Why?
For an audience with my all-time favourite author: blockbuster queen and witty icon of women everywhere, Jilly Cooper. It might as well have been the Pope, my friend and I were that excited, and the staff of Foyles, in its 80th year of hosting literary dinners, seemed equally overjoyed. This is the latest — PD James is up next, on November 8.

What was it like?
Given that most of the saucy bits of her books take place in glamorous surroundings, the glitz of the St Pancras Grand is perfect to hear Cooper talk about her new novel, Jump! (she’s convinced it’s her worst book and people will hate it — this despite it reaching number one on The Sunday Times bestseller list a mere three days after going on sale).

Lounging gloriously by the Eurostar terminal, the Grand feels like a Moulin Rouge version of the waiting room in Brief Encounter, all sultry lighting, intimate booths and art-deco lamps. Waiting staff are friendly and polite — what a change from actually being on a train — and the loos are particularly decadent.

After a couple of glasses of wine, I had to take a breather on the velvet sofa just outside to put myself in proper order.

What did you eat?
Each course was followed by chat from Cooper, whose own bouche amuses infinitely more than our so-so duck starter, unfairly surrounded by that edible party-pooper, beetroot.

Read the rest at TheSundayTimes.co.uk

Confirmation Diary for The Times

As spartan and sporadic as this blog is (I'm a Twitter girl at heart), the fact that I'm now writing a series of blogs for The Times seemed more appropriate to mentioning here.

Over the course of the next six weeks, I will be diarising the course of classes that will lead to me being confirmed as your actual C of E member in November.

The first blog I've written explains why I'm doing it, 14 years after the usual time everyone does it (mostly through school and because everyone else is) and why it's taken me so long to get here.

It costs a quid, so if you already subscribe to The Times website, click away, otherwise feel free to wait until you've hoarded enough links to feel like you can.

Here's the first few pars to whet your appetite:

Earlier this year, after two years of dithering and 17 years after thinking that I probably wouldn’t bother at all, I decided to get confirmed.

There was no Damascene conversion, no flash of light, no gravelly disembodied voice from above. I was bought up in a C of E family that goes to church on Sundays. But at 10, I looked around at the congregation and decided with the black-and-white morality of the very young, that everyone there was a Sunday-only hypocrite and I didn’t want to get confirmed just because it was the done thing.

Exactly what made me think I could see into the hearts of an entire congregation is beyond me. What interests me now, is why I didn’t get confirmed just for the sake of it, as a lot of people do. Even then I knew that getting confirmed was important, something that really mattered to some people and I didn’t want to jump on their toes by doing it simply to get a nice bit of gold and a weekly source of underage wine.

Over the years, I railed against the Church. I hated the way organised religion seemed to pull people apart, rather than together, and the bullying superiority some societies had in the name of God. This wasn’t Godly at all, I thought, watching in horror as religion was used to cry witch at children in Nigeria, decry homosexuals, single mothers, people wanting or needing abortions, at people in wars.

I absolutely loathed it.

But I still couldn’t stay away. Every time I found a church, I would go inside and lit a candle and prayed for my family and friends. The solitude and peace was blissful. Over the years, it stopped being about the candles and started being about a connection that transcended the horror of human beings.

Read the rest here: Why I'm getting confirmed

Jilly Cooper’s jolly dinner party - and a sneak peek at the plot of her next book!

Great food – tick, meet idol – tick, get private sneak preview of plot for the next book – hang on, WOW. There's more than food on-hand at this literary meal...

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jilly Cooper has just told the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard. Years of reading about blowjobs in helicopters, Kenyan orgies and shagging on glockenspiels has left me blasé when it comes to Cooper sex, but nothing can prepare you for it coming live from this tiny, glamorous woman with impossibly huge hair, grinning away like a model-thin Nanny Ogg.

Listening to Cooper speaking at Foyles’ literary dinner, I dimly understand how Catholics in Hyde Park must have felt the other week. I’ve worshipped at the Cooper shrine since finding my mother’s 70s copy of Emily, aged 11, and desperately wishing she’d written about interesting things happening to a Katherine as well. Even now, mention Cooper to most women over 16 and you’ll invariably be greeted in ecstasies along the lines of, “She is amazing! Got me through school/first job/all my most rubbish break-ups.”

Me, Becca and Jilly Cooper. Scream.

A friend rather sniffily asked if a Jilly Cooper literary dinner wasn’t an oxymoron. No! I replied, precisely because nobody writes people like Cooper. She’s the Dickens of Gloucestershire. Even people who don’t like romance novels like her novels (a barrister I know loved the court case in Prudence) which, contrary to the bonkbuster label, are masterpieces in characterisation and waspish social commentary.

Given that most of the saucy bits of her books take place in glamorous surroundings, it’s fitting that we’re at the St Pancras Grand to hear her talk about new book Jump! (she’s convinced it’s her worst book and people will hate it – by pudding, we’ve heard that it’s already hit number 1 after four days) and her career.

And what a career. Having charmed Sunday Times Magazine editor Godfrey Smith at a dinner party in the 60s, Cooper wrote a funny piece on being a young wife: “That piece paid £100 and we lived on it for a month.” At the same time, she was submitting short stories to magazines while working in a publishing house, until her boss took her aside to say “You’re a lousy editor, but not a bad writer.”

The rest is history for Cooper, who, chronicling society with the eye of a bawdy Jane Austen, has remained the queen of the British blockbuster for decades. Of the glamorous horse racing syndicate she joined while researching Jump!, she self-deprecatingly describes herself as “the common denominator”, which is spot on. However smart, a Cooper hero is an accessible one, believable even when bonking on the aforementioned glockenspiel (Cooper, a stickler for detail, checked that this was possible first).

The best thing about this evening is hearing snippets about how she could, and does, draw from life for the huge casts of her books, set in the fictional county of Rutshire. Many descriptions from her columns would later show up in her 70s romances, and she clearly had great fun researching Jump!. “One of my syndicate was so excited he fainted and went to Casualty,” she giggles, before reeling a off a story about the night after the Grand National, when the winner’s team had been holed up all night in a Liverpool hotel. “The barman came over and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry sir, we have run out of drink.’”

Cooper has always fared best on familiar territory of horses, money and social climbing, and some recent nods to modernity haven’t come off that well. It’s worth drawing a veil particularly over Wicked!’s paedophile rings and working class school kids and Pandora’s wobbly ventures into text speak. This time it’s all fairly trad-Cooper, with mixed results. Even Jump!’s jockey Rafiq Khan, “a lovely Pakistani ex-suicide bomber” harks back to the delectable, and dangerous, Argentine pilot Angel from Polo.

Not that Cooper is finding it easier to write her Rutshire Chronicles after 40 years. She hates writing, finds it very hard, but keeps going for the money; a recurring theme in her novels which often feature successful, but cash-strapped families. When published to storming success in 1984, Riders, she bluntly admits, saved her house. “The bank manager had come round before and said, ‘Lovely, lovely house. What a shame you’re going to lose it.’”

Every chapter has about six drafts – “I’m born in Pisces, which is a very muddled sign.” – and, Dahl-like, she writes her books in her garden shed, where she sits through the day with her two dogs until they start hinting at walks.

Cooper, strangely, credits her success almost entirely on the animals that populate her books, probably because they’re just as well-drawn as the humans, and frequently nicer. She describes the Irish racehorse, Baron Romeo, she encountered while writing Jump! as “so vain he couldn’t pass a puddle without staring. He was leading a race once, until he caught sight of himself in the screen, cantered off to admire and came in last.”

What’s baffling is that she doesn’t appear to realise quite how much a) that it’s not so much the animals as it is her or b) quite how much she’s adored by her readers. She cries, ‘Darling girl, isn’t she lovely?’ every time the host, book critic Alexandra Heminsley, says something complimentary, and when my friend and I inch up the table to unleash all the thanks that have been boiling away (my school exam survival is thanks entirely to Polo), she hugs us both, makes us promise to write the fan letters we’d meant to as teenagers and nearly starts to cry.

It’s not just food for Cooper either, and much to our excitement Cooper gives my friend and I a sneak peek of the plot for her next book. Cooper’s best-loved hero, the reformed rake and “Mecca for most women”, Rupert Campbell-Black, is now nearing 60. His sainted wife Taggie is trying to sort out a birthday party, but he refuses to stay in one place and she has to deal with his perennially broke family all insisting on getting their flights paid for before they go anywhere. We can’t wait.

This approach to a literary dinner, gossipy and filled with in-jokes, really works best if you like the books in the first place, but it’s a shame no questions were taken from the floor. If you don’t have the brass neck to approach whoever’s speaking, you could leave well-fed but rather uninformed.

The St Pancras Grand feeds you well, as it should for £55. Post-Cooper chat, I was in such a spin that I absent-mindedly inhaled my (divine) chocolate and caramel tart. My friend virtuously abstained from hers, which is probably why she looks gorgeous in the photo we later snap with Jilly, while I look like a sated rhinoceros.
And if you want to know what that filthy joke was – it involves three women on a train, lies and 15 budgerigars. And that’s all I can say without asterisks.

The next Foyles literary dinner at the St Pancras Grand is PD James on Monday 8 November. Tickets are £55 and include a three-course meal. To book call 020 7870 9900 or email stpg@searcys.co.uk

How Stylist Magazine restyled my medical history

Outside a brief entry on my old blog, I’ve never publicly written about my veeeery longstanding (and hurray, finished!) battle with depression, but having been happy and healthy for the last five years, and witnessed a growing campaign to remove the taboos surrounding mental health, I was happy to volunteer as a case study when a friend working at Stylist magazine was looking for them.

Wow, what a mistake that was.

In today’s issue of Stylist, floating inside an insightful piece by @hencehemmo on depression, you will find a first-person case study ostensibly written by me. Bollocks. This has been cobbled together from a long series of email Q&As and topped off with “Two Stylist readers reveal how depression affects their lives.”

I’m sorry, did I miss the bit where I suddenly got ill again? Thanks to London’s 78 buses grinding to a halt today I had to walk a fair bit in the rain, but the last time I checked having a wet face and ENORMOUS attack of the sulks wasn’t the same as depression. And FYI, I walk to work. Unless the Old Kent Road invests in newsprint over tarmac, I ain’t a Stylist reader.

So, here we have it: “Kat Brown has suffered from depression since she was a teenager” Remove that "has" so it sounds more done and you’re about right. Otherwise,WTF? Mate, I had that shitty illness for far longer than my due, but I’m certainly over it now thank heavens.

So, a magazine exaggerated to fit their bill, you say, plus ca change – it’s a bloody magazine. Not quite. In my very first contact with the freelancer doing the interview, I asked to do it via email rather than phone so I could get the wording exactly right. I had also specifically asked to look over the copy the journalist was going to file, not to retract anything – this, I’d made perfectly clear, I’ve got nothing to hide about what a crap eight years I had – but to ensure that it came across as I wanted. I was the one who’d spent years in the humiliating grip of a truly vile illness and I wanted to make sure the words were mine. This may not seem important to you, but it’s hugely important to me. Talking about the times I wanted to kill myself/nearly flunked out of university/lost friends? Not really your average banter.

The freelance journo in question, Kate Graham, was staggering. There should be monuments created to such tactless ineptitude, probably in France. Each email I sent her was greeted with...nothing. No thanks, no response beyond farming out more questions. She may have behaved like a disinterested autobot on work experience because I was a fellow hack, or because I was mates with her Stylist friend. Maybe the very fact I’d volunteered removed me from the realms of sensitivity (“Yeah, she’s talking about when she cut herself just to try and fucking FEEL something but wevs, they totally did that on The OC that one time”). If the other interviewee (for lo! There was one!) was treated with the same level of disinterest, I’m very sorry.

Take this reply to an email Q&A detailing precisely the times when I’d felt most suicidal (I told you this was starry stuff, WELL fun this depression lark, definitely worth making it active rather than past):

Hi Kat,
My editor wants us to focus in on what it really feels like when the depression is there. The kinds of things we’d like to know are (etc):

Are we seeing a “thank you” listed anywhere here? Is there a, “Sorry to ask you to go into more detail, what you sent over was great, but” hidden somewhere between the first and second sentence that I may have missed?
My Ocado delivery of symptoms and documented times followed shortly after, natch.

I certainly should have paid more attention to that sneaky former phrase “when the depression is there”. Silly me! I thought it meant at the time, but instead I’ve been turned into a case study of an existing patient when there is an entire city out there filled with people who could do a much better job, more accurately.

Stylist were clearly looking for people who were suffering from ongoing depression and, Graham apparently being too lazy to seek out people who were still ill, decided to paste everything together. How charming. Well, fuck you very much Stylist.

By all means – sub your copy to suit your purposes, mess around with celebrities who are in it. But don’t sub my life, my brain, me to fit this. Still, ironic really that they did end up making me write about mental illness. I haven’t been this angry in a very, very long time.

Why Love Never Dies deserves its bad internet reviews (and why Andrew Lloyd Webber needs to read them)

According to Lynn Gardner in today’s Guardian, Andrew Lloyd Webber is in a bit of a sulk about the fact people are posting negative reviews of Love Never Dies - the “not a sequel, honest” to his 80s hit, The Phantom of the Opera – on the internet.

In amidst flouncing about the flurry of bad reviews doing the rounds on blogs, message boards and - the ultimate delight – the West End Whingers’ verdict, Paint Never Dries, being picked up by every newspaper in Britain – Andrew Lloyd Webber is reported to be cross that nobody’s mentioned the moveable feast that is the preview week and how much can be changed over the course of the shows before opening night.

Well, tough. I saw it on Saturday night: as close as I could get to tonight’s press night to form an opinion without having my trip spoiled by other reviews and the problem with Lloyd Webber’s thoughts is that it’s very unlikely Love Never Dies’ biggest failing will be addressed – the book is an absolute dog.

Paint Never Dries indeed - very prettily at that, the set and costumes are beautifully done - but Christ: this may as well be Much Ado About Nothing, the more literal version. As Gardner points out, people paid full whack for the previews - I paid almost £70 for my front row dress circle seat - and so deserve a cracking production. Bad feedback on the internet flags up what's wrong, it's not just a load of nutters expecting a second Phantom and disappointed at not getting it.

Never have I seen a show where so much vibrato happens over sod all. Nothing happens. Halfway through I was crying out for Joel Schumacher to crowbar in a pony where it wasn't needed just for something to go "Ooh! Eh?" at.

The Phantom’s hired Christine to sing at a new New York fairground that Meg and Mme Giry helped him build up (Meg is, for ridiculous reasons, now a burlesque dancer, presumably as a nod to busty Jennifer Ellison's strong work playing her in the film). Raoul and Christine’s marriage is in trouble. Raoul agrees to leave Christine to the Phantom after a mild singing sulk and a fairly amicable discussion about gambling.

A bit of crying ensues towards the end but there’s no conflict, none of the pizzazz that makes millions of people flock to Phantom year on year. I saw Love Never Dies with the friend I saw the original Phantom with 20 years ago. I adore it. After a few gins I’ve been known to deliver enthusiastic lectures on why Phantom is the most exciting score ever – not show, the last time I saw it, it may as well have been acted by Butlins red coats –and I once set a dinner party on fire in my excitement at being allowed to put it on the stereo. There’s no fear of getting that same excitement with Love Never Dies.

God knows the cast do their best to inject some life into a plot whose thinness is such that no metaphor can come close to doing it justice. But no matter how good the songs are – and, by and large they are very good – they come across as ludicrously overblown given the lack of any emotional context. There’s just no real conflict for the characters to get their teeth into.

Ramin Karimloo, who cut his teeth as the Phantom on its elder sister down the road for a few years, is wonderful and tries his best to prowl around erotically as the Phantom. But, still, it doesn't stop the fact that the insurmountable troubles faced by the characters are actually quite surmountable. Piddly, in fact. Watching Love Never Dies is like watching a Relate meeting populated by divas borrowed from a better show: the RSC giving their all to a rendition of the Highway Code.

The anticipation that makes Phantom of the Opera so addictive, the build-ups and motifs running throughout it, is absent here, making the motifs The Lord has borrowed from Phantom even more saddening. There’s two, maybe three really good musicals in Love Never Dies, but in order to become one truly brilliant one Ben Elton, who "unlocked" the story, needs a slap and to lock it back up again, and the plot needs serious work. That’s why people are complaining about LND and that’s why Lloyd Webber needs to stop sulking and pay some attention.

What's freakish about being freakishly tall?

How would you feel if someone called you freakish? Freakishly fat maybe. How about freakishly short? Now, imagine that person is in charge of one of Britain’s top-selling woman’s magazines.

"Anorexia is a mental illness,” Lorraine Candy, editor in chief at Elle, told Monday’s Media Guardian. “It is driven by many, many things. I cannot change a girl's life [which is] as much a contributing factor as possibly looking at a magazine and saying I want to be as thin as that girl. And these girls are freakishly tall … If the girls look healthy and fit that's my rule of thumb.”

Candy may have thought she was appeasing her critics when she used being “freakishly tall” as an excuse for many magazine models being lovely twigs but instead she’s tarred a chunk of her readership with a very unpleasant brush. I’d love to see the piece where she calls plus-size models freakishly fat, or catwalk models freakishly thin.

I’m 6’1. That’s taller than most of the magazine models who, thanks to Candy’s dismissal, are now probably finding even more things to angst about than their diet or next job. Last time I checked, being tall doesn’t work like stretching elastic – you don’t automatically get thinner just by growing a few inches. Next time I get told “You should be a model” simply because I am larger than most bookcases, I will respond with my dress size – 12-14, a whopping six sizes above size zero – and watch the confusion spread as, invariably, it does. Tall doesn’t equal model, which is why it’s so annoying that we’re never catered for in magazines.

I’m not alone in having Amazonian proportions. There really are quite a lot of us, striding around in Topshop Tall and hunting down hot shoes in a size 9 plus. Because frankly, if anyone’s responsible for making being tall freakish, it’s Lorraine Candy and her magazine editing ilk - same with being curvy, petite, black, redhead or any of the other myriad looks that get sod all attention in women’s magazines. Using freakish as an adjective to describe any woman – and, last time I checked, models were still women – is a very strange move by the editor of a women’s magazine in an industry constantly telling us we’re worth it.

I see plenty of tall, gorgeously-dressed women in London, and when I do I gawk unashamedly. Not because they’re at my eye level – although what a brilliant rarity that is – but because I want to find out what they’re wearing and where they got it from. God knows I don’t expect the magazines I read to tell me: Vogue, Elle and Glamour might use tall models, but they certainly don’t cater for their tall readers beyond sporadic mentions of tall ranges and £150 jeans.

”Freakishly tall” in magazine terms tends to mean around 5’9, or, if it’s Jourdan Dunn week at Vogue, 5’10. You simply can’t use very tall models to advertise high street ranges because most unaltered clothes won’t fit, and ditto shoes. Faith, Topshop , DUO, Aldo and Jimmy Choo do sterling work for the size 9s among us, but if you want bigger than that then it’s into the wasteland of internet catalogues and seriously ugly footwear.

What about 6’? Jordin Sparks and Uma Thurman, both six-footers, seem to have done pretty well for themselves, as does Glee’s Jane Lynch. I haven’t seen Thurman or Lynch cast as the freak recently. Even in the Long Tall Sally catalogue, the tallest model is only 6’, nothing very freakish there, and nothing to reach out to all the girls entering their country’s version of America’s Next Top Model, or dolefully buying yet another pair of trainers because Schuh doesn’t do anything else in a size 9.

Being told that something about me is freakish is nothing unusual. I get it for my Archers addiction, my penchant for using words that went out of fashion in the 1930s, and for my extraordinary love of Grease 2. But come on, having a pop at a girl’s height? It’s shooting fish in a barrel. We know we’re tall. We don’t need people pointing this out to us, as though the fact we can reach the top shelf in Tesco’s is a miraculous development that has hitherto passed us by. Least of all do we need people in charge of trends and fashion casually dismissing us as wrong.

What is wrong here is that there is a global community of tall women who want to shop – love it in fact – and who are given a ridiculously small amount of information on how to dress, or where to get clothing from. Tall bodies don’t automatically fit into the athletic category that most magazine quizzes put us in. Some of us have curves too, our own styles – vintage: what a bloody nightmare that is – and yet despite the supposed prevalence of “freakishly tall” models in magazines, I don’t see much info specifically directed at us. Lorraine Candy, rather than dismissing models as bizarre, should take the opportunity to reach out to the girls who don’t always have many realistic style role models. It can be just as isolated growing up tall as growing up fat.

Kat Brown, 6’1, UK 9 shoe

- Since the women's mags don't tell us: Where to get stylish, tall clothes without having to go designer -

In an ideal world, I would walk around dressed entirely in Lanvin, Chanel and La Petite S*****, but given the current media climate that's extraordinarily unlikely to happen. These are my favourite places for tall clothes shopping on the high street.There really aren’t that many for a girl with a 36.5" leg, but these are all good.

- CLOTHES -

Topshop Tall (limited even in the OC flagship store, best selection online)

Dorothy Perkins Tall (limited selection instore but loads online. Their jeans are excellent and £20)

H&M (their cardigans have FABULOUSLY long sleeves)

French Connection (ditto)

M&S (Very short-lived online-only tall selection, but their skirts, dresses and knitwear are fine)

Monsoon (brilliant for A-line party frocks)

Long Tall Sally (slowly evolving beyond ghastly high-waisted everything, very good sales)

- SHOES -

DUO (I got all my boots here - perfect!) - www.duoboots.com

Amber and Jade go up to a 13! Lovely shoes and boots. www.amberandjade.com

Topshop (9s. Great for flats.)

LK Bennett (9s. Pricey but gorgeous, aim for the sales.)

Jones The Bootmaker (9s. Good for work.)

Irregular Choice (9s. Deliriously luscious shoes in quirky styles.)

Office (9s. Quality varies but an old reliable.)

DUO Boots and shoes (made to measure, up to a 10 – great sales again)

Russell and Bromley (9s - great for boots and Chanel-style quilted pumps but, horrifyingly, no website.)

Evans (9s, 10s, introducing size 11s soon. Fit tends to be on the wide size)

Jimmy Choo (9s. Head to The Out Net if, like me, £400 is a bit on the steep side)

Aldo (9s. Not nearly as cheap-looking as the shops make it seem.)

- Accessories -

This is the fun part - buy whatever the hell you like

Got any tips? Share them here – my wardrobe will thank you.

Sites, blogs and Twitter accounts that get me through the day

Some of these will be self-explanatory, others less so: suffice to say they're all utterly brilliant and I couldn't live without them. All have much the same effect as a bucket of black Americano if same has not managed to get into my system first thing in the morning.

- Journalism and SEO -

Journo favourites on Twitter

- Theatre -

Mark Shenton @ The Stage