Dave Woodhall listens to writer Kathy Lette about her new show and lots more.
Here was me thinking that the idea of doing an interview was to ask the subject the questions then listen to the answers. Not to be asked loads of stuff yourself about everything and then hardly able to get a word in, but that’s what happens when you talk to one-woman force of nature Kathy Lette. This is what was left when I took (most of) the bits about me out, starting with her show Girls Night Out, coming to Solihull on 3rd November.
“Do you want to know what we talk about when men aren’t around. No? I don’t know why a man should be scared. We want a man who knows the Kama Sutra’s not an Indian takeaway. We want a man who knows that a woman who says the way to his heart is his stomach isn’t aiming too high. And we like you to talk to us occasionally. We want someone who helps round the house. It’s been scientifically proven that no woman ever shot her husband while he was vacuuming, I don’t think that’s asking a lot.”
It sounds great, although I wonder where I might fit into the audience.
“You’ve got to come. We’ll have every man in the hall ovulating by the end of the evening. Women come, and they come in groups – mothers, daughters, friends, family, and I always look for what group they’re in. My theme for the show is that women are like Wonderbras; uplifting, supporting, making each other look bigger and better. It’s 
“I touch on the things that women go through. I’m absolutely convinced that God is a bloke, when you look at all the things women go through when they first get periods, when they get taken hostage by their hormones once a month and then they’ve got pregnancy where everything swells, then there’s mastitis and there’s the menopause, then just when you think everything’s alright what happens? You grow a beard. What’s going on here?
“Then in the second half we strip off our emotional undies. It’s like an emotional version of the Full Monty, because when women are together if you look at male and female humour, all my male friends are funny but they tend to tell set jokes, but my female friends never tell set jokes. Our humour is more confessional, cathartic, self-deprecating, anecdotal, and it’s hilarious but we do tend to tell each other everything.
“Women wouldn’t get through our darker days without our friends and we do have more dark days because we are the carers, it tends to be the woman who cares for the aged, for our sick children, our fragile friends. Then I talk about my own experience raising my autistic son and what that’s been like, the travails and tribulations of that tine, then I open up to the audience. This is my favourite part, when we put the house lights up and we share our stories. It’s like a big girls night out. We laugh, and we cry, then we all go to the bar and end up swinging from the chandeliers with a toyboy between our teeth. Does that tickle your fancy and float your boat in any way?”
Er, I can’t swing. I’ve got a bad knee.
“But it is very empowering. It’s interesting to see how women come out of it, because I feel that if I have any gift at all it’s putting into words what women might be thinking without saying out loud, so when I say it for them they laugh and they feel a sense of relief that it’s okay, they feel that way too, and then everybody just bonds. It’s fascinating, it’s so uplifting.”
You must also be looking at the audience and seeing people who might not know what they’re doing there yet at the end of the show they’re best friends with everyone.
“A bit, but they know it’s going to be a girls night out and they’re always fun. Anthropologists say women laugh more often than men, especially when they’re in all-female groups. It’s a way of survival – if you can laugh about something it’s like a giant shock absorber to the brain, it takes the sting out of it. It brings us closer together but it’s also a great stress reliever. From Inuit to Kiwis to the posh women in Notting HilL Gate, that’s the way women relate to each other.
“I started doing the show last summer because when you’re an author you’re always doing book tours and literary lunches. I saw that women loved it but always ended up looking a bit shell-shocked so I thought I should do a show when women could come along and have a safe space where we can talk about anything, and it’s just been so joyful to do it. It’s been a privilege to met my readers because they bring along little anecdotal doggie bags of things I can put in my novels. It’s been so liberating.”
When you say you’re a writer do you find it’s like someone saying they’re a doctor and suddenly get asked about illnesses?
“Doctors should prescribe novels. Instead of Prozac prescribe a Jeffrey Archer, that bloke’ll put you to sleep in a heartbeat. Let them read War & Peace to put things in perspective, or a comedy to cheer them up. Books are essentially penicillin. They cure everything from heartbreak to existential angst.”
You’ve also done Edinburgh this summer.
“I love being in big crowds, I love hearing people talking because you can eavesdrop on the most fantastic things that I can write down. I study the human animal for characters. If you were writing a novel you’d do the same. Have you got a novel in there somewhere?”
Sorry, that’s a no again.
“That’s a shame but it’s so difficult to sell books now. I’m hoping people will get sick of Netflix and start looking inside some covers again. I can look round the house and I’m surrounded by books. They’re so comforting. When I lived in LA, when I was writing sitcoms there, they had no book shops. Nobody has books in their houses; I went to someone’s house and I was so excited because I could see all these books. I rushed over to pick one up and it was wallpaper, moulded to look like books on bookshelves. I read that one independent bookshop closes every week in Britain, it breaks my heart. But let’s not get too depressed.”
It was your first time doing Edinburgh. Did that mean you had to share a room with seven other comics and have three people in the audience?
“Not at my age. I don’t rough it. A sedan chair and a helicopter? Maybe I should put that in my rider. I went to see Kylie Minogue at Hyde Park last night and Jason Donovan went on stage to sing with her. She’d only rung him an hour earlier and he cycled there. I loved that.”
You were actually staying with Gordon Brown and his wife.
“I love Gordon, I have a lot of respect for him. I think we’ve been hit by a meteorite and the whole world’s gone off its axis in some way. We’ve got Nazis in Sweden, what’s going on? That’s why the show is good, because while things are getting better for woman, it’s still outrageous that we don’t have equal pay. We’re getting concussion hitting the glass ceiling and we have to clean it while we’re up there, but with MeToo and TimesUp and the resurgence in feminism there are a lot of positive things happening for women, we have to keep pushing at it. But we’re not man-bashing. Nothing’s going to change until you boys join us at the barricades. We might tease men, but it’s also loving.”
No doubt you expect a backlash from the sort of men who think they’re disadvantaged when in reality they rule the world.
“Hysterical isn’t it? It’s like Trump going on about fake news, when everything he says is fake. Say something often enough and people will believe it. But carpe diem. Seize the moment, have as much fun as you possibly can and don’t feel guilty about it. Have fun, have frivolity, be friendly and be fearless. Get out from under.”
You took out British citizenship in 2011. Have you ever thought about reading the small print to see if there’s some kind of money-back guarantee?
“So if I don’t like it, can I escape? I’ve kept my Australian passport so I can escape back if Boris gets elected. We like taking Brits, so we can take all the nice ones with us. if it ends up with just this little England of Morris dancing and scone baking, we could take all the lovely Poms to the Antipodes.”
Kathy Lette’s Girls Night Out comes to the Core Theatre, Solihull on Saturday, 3rd November.