Kathy Lette Transcript from
the Hay Festival

(*Warning: This text contains adult humour)

BBC Host: Hello, and welcome to today's Hay Festival TalkWales live chat with

Kathy Lette in Hay-on-Wye, right on the border between Wales and England. Here's the first question.

Tom: Can you give me some examples of the word 'punilingus'?

Kathy Lette: (Laughs) OK. We'll just say that word play is foreplay for women - how else does Woody Allen get laid?! I guess we just love the tip of a man's pun. Especially if there's wit on the end of it.

Rhodri: As you work from your real life experiences, does this mean that you have to have an affair?

Kathy Lette: I've told my husband I have to have an affair to get my material. But he's told me that he has to have an affair to give me more angst, so we're currently negotiating. Why? Are you offering?

Tom: Do you create many new words to describe moments within your work?

Kathy Lette: I make up new words all the time. I don't like to put other people's words in my mouth .. Because you never know where they've been! For example, we have the Gliterati and the Literati, but we needed a word for The Cliterati - of which I'm High Priestess.

William: I'm an Australian living in London and get called all sorts of names! Do you ever get called a 'kiwi' .. and, if so, how do you respond?

Kathy Lette: Well, I can think of much worse things to be called than a Kiwi. The thing about the English is that they don't speak English - they speak Euphomism. It took me a long time to work that out. When I first lobbed into London and Pommes said "oh you Austrailians are so refreshing", I thought they really really liked me. I now know that means "Rack off, you loudmouth colonial nymphomaniac" ... How dare they call me a loudmouth!

Polly: What writers/books do you read for pleasure? Do you have any literary role models?

Kathy Lette: Literary role models.... Just the dead chicks. Jane Austen, Simone de Beauvoir, The Brontes. But it's interesting that our whole literary female canon didn't have babies. Books and babies don't seem to go together. I'm at that stage of motherhood where I'm putting the kids under the sink and the lethal household substances within my own reach.

BBC Host: It's quite noisy where we are here on the site of the Hay Literature Festival. We've got the queue for the Esquire tent snaking past us. It's not raining at the moment, but it's very muddy underfoot.

Jackie: Do you suffer from PMT? If so, do your family notice?

Kathy Lette: Do you mean Pre-Monogomy Tension? Yeah, I suffer from that a lot. My family only notice when I install hot and cold running toyboys.

Della: I have a three month old baby and feel like I could scream (make me a women again!) .. I love your work, but how long did it take you to start writing after enduring labour?

Kathy Lette: Yeah, Motherhood sucks. Literally. Any mother who says she copes all the time is either lying or taking a LOT of drugs. Sometimes I've been so bored doing creative things with Playdough that I've been able to see my plants engaging in photosynthesis. Once, I grew a yeast infection AS A CHANGE OF PACE. I'm so desperate not to have any more children, I've put a condom on my vibrator. But don't worry, it does get easier. Meanwhile, take drugs!

BBC Host: Interesting to observe the dynamics between Kathy and League of Gentlemen co-writer, Jeremy Dyson, in their session at Hay this morning. Kathy kept hitting Jeremy :-)

Josie: Did you endure a long labour, and how supportive was your husband?

Kathy Lette: It's during labour you realise God is a bloke. And yet there was such pressure on me to give birth naturally - a case of stiff upper labia. My husband didn't want to be at the birth. BUT HEY, I DIDN'T WANT TO BE THERE EITHER. The only reason to have husbands there is that's the one time in your life to get everything you want. When he says "darling, what can I do for you?" The answer is "New car, new carpet, holiday in the Caribbean". They're the pregnancy cravings I had! The only other birth tip I'd give is not to have the enema because crapping on the obstetrician is the ULTIMATE REVENGE!

Drew: Is feminism dead?

Kathy Lette: Any women who calls herself a post-feminist has kept her Wonderbra and burnt her brain. Women in Britain are only getting 75p in the pound, still doing all the housework, still getting concussion on the glass ceiling and we're supposed to clean it while we're up there. I'm afraid we girls still occasionally need to use men's testicles as maracas.

Michael: What's the worst thing about men?

Kathy Lette: Peeing on the porcelian. Pet names for the penis. Thinking that reading on the loo is a leisure activity. Thinking that sex drive means doing it in the car, but I think I've realised why that is. It's that little sign on the rearview mirror saying "objects in this mirror may appear larger than they actually are".

Alex Worcester: What does the word "Feminism" mean to you? And what do you think it means to *most* people?

Kathy Lette: Feminism is about being treated as an equal - not a sequel. It's not that women are asking for that much. We just want a bloke who's emotionally articulate. i.e. has more than a three grunt vocabulary. Someone who can find a cosy little spot that goes by the name of "G" and can do Sensitive Things with snow peas.

Jessie: Are you the life and soul of the party?

Kathy Lette: Yeah, I do give good hedonism. Hey, life's too short to be subtle.

Joe: Are you a romantic?

Kathy Lette: I'm a closet romantic. But don't tell anybody.

Fi: Has your heart ever been broken?

Kathy Lette: Like all women I seem to wear a sign on my heart that says "In case of emergencies, break". But then I just go into Margaret Mead mode and I use it as material! Poetic justice is the only justice in the world - and I say that being married to a lawyer.

Frank: Your books seem to be full of tales of broken romances and unpleasant men. Can the course of true love ever run smoothly?

Kathy Lette: Unpleasant men - isn't that a tautology? If only they weren't so much fun in bed. If only there was a third sex available to us!

Helen: What's the best way to leave your lover?

Kathy Lette: With a genital disease.

Kate: What's the best Valentine's present you've ever received?

Kathy Lette: The penicillin for the genital disease.

Cats: Is your husband as open minded as yourself and do you complement each other well?

Kathy Lette: I dive in the shallow end and he dives in the deep end. So between us we've got the waterfront covered.

Geraint: Were you a loudmouth at school?

Kathy Lette: I left school at 15. The only examination I've ever passed is my cervical smear test! The thing I don't understand about school is why they spend the first three years teaching you to talk and the next few years teaching you to shut-up

Mosey: What annoys you most about being a woman?

Kathy Lette: Mastitis, cystistis, period pain, cracked nipples, post-birth haemarroids (Edmund Hillary couldn't scale those b******s!) and the fact that we find men so damned attractive.

Arwyn: Do you think Austrailian or British men make better lovers?

Kathy Lette: Neither. Australian men disprove the theory of evolution - they're evolving into apes. But what have cold beer and cunnilingus got in common? You can't get either in England.

Arwyn: Where do you place Welsh men?

Kathy Lette: Between my legs, preferably!

Alex: You make it out as though men are no good in bed. I'm brilliant! And all my mates tell me they are too.

Kathy Lette: Well we all know we have to divide everything men say by a hundred. But hey, send me a sexual CV.

Paula: Has having children changed your priorities? What good advice will you pass on to them?

Kathy Lette: Take life with a packet of salt and always remember that optimism is not an eye disease.

BBC Host: Here's Kathy with a final word ...

Kathy Lette: If you can't be good, be damned good at it. Bye all!

...Let us know your thoughts on Kathy's quirky replies within Chat Away ;-)