W: Marina, welcome to Waterstones.
MH: Thank you so much for having me.
W: In talking about your book we do have
to examine what's been going on over the last six years...
MH: I'm sorry we have to return to some sad places for all of ourselves.
W: It's weird to go back over this period of time and with your collection of writings I found that
if I did a sort of lucky dip and just sort of went in to see what was there it was a) very
funny and surprising what it would be, but also weirdly nostalgic and I found myself going oh
remember when Boris Johnson was just foreign secretary and quite funny in his buffoonery.
MH: I mean it's funny the things we can have nostalgia for in general in life and I think
that's quite, I mean, in a way isn't that what nostalgia is, a sort of slightly false memory
of it being better. But I suppose what the book does do is allow you to see how
from about the middle of 2016, how you keep thinking well this period perhaps will finish
and things will get back to normal but instead things become more chaotic and more disorganised
and more crazy. And I feel like that's still happening. There's no sense of an exit panel
or a way out and if any readers can help me tunnel out I would love some assistance.
W: When you're sort of observing the world, how does it work for you? Do you kind of go I need
to write about that, what do I think about that? Or do you think oh I've got a thought about that,
I'll write a column about it, or how... how does the process work?
MH: It's a good question and by the way in the old days everyone could ignore the news for
weeks on end. Now there's so many things happening that you often think oh my God
this is such a shame I haven't got time to write about that because so many things have happened.
But I get up in the morning and I have a blank Word document and
I think what is the sort of best thing I can, or the sort of thing that feels
right that I should be writing about today. And I just choose it like that.
W: Do you have a favourite target to sort of approach or is it all just fair game?
MH: I don't know about a favourite. I mean anybody who sort of takes themselves overly seriously. I
think particularly in this country we've always absolutely loved sort of I mean we have an amazing
tradition of satire in this country. Somebody said that we have jokes instead of revolutions.
I wonder if that's true. Yeah I think maybe that is true. Anyhow, but yeah anybody who
takes themselves too seriously, so it could be, it could be anyone. It could be in sport,
it could be, I don't know the FA or it could be Gwyneth Paltrow or it could be, I don't know,
anyone in current British politics probably who should all realise that they're clowns.
W: I liked the description of Gwyneth Paltrow who had sort of taken what you're
supposed to do in between the acting gigs and made that her permanent job;
the sort of hanging around dispensing weird wellness advice...
MH: I think she really likes the control of it. I suppose other people are in control
when you're acting but I'm really interested in the whole wellness thing where, you know, people
sort of make you sick or identify sicknesses so that they can sell you the cure. It seems like
this really extreme kind of turbo-capitalist way of she'll sell you one thing and it will
cause some other knock-on problem because you're really not supposed to put a jade egg up there,
so you'll get some backache and then she's got a thing for your backache and and it's just
basically sort of constantly, it's an iteration all along and you never get out of it and and
actually you're never well. How can you possibly not be well after spending that much money?
W: Looking back on a figure, I mentioned Boris right at the beginning,
I do feel almost like we maybe have come to the end of his cycle but hey,
he may return like a Covid variant to sort of strike in the future. How do you feel about
Boris now having been through this whole whirlwind, I wouldn't call it a romance...
MH: I feel exactly the same as I felt before he came to power. I mean I'm not gonna do an
I told you so but I mean really?! What did people think was going to happen?
I feel exactly the same, nothing has changed, in the words of Theresa May,
nothing has changed. I knew what was like before, he's been proven to be like that.
I don't even think he is necessarily down and out, things are so mad that you wouldn't
even rule out - I mean, you know, Trump's favourite for the Republican nomination.
W: Well, I was going to say, the other person who threatens to return is Trump and his whole
presidency... I remember the beginning of it there's that sort of ghoulish fascination when you
turn on the news and you're like what mad thing has he said now and done now. But it still felt
relatively harmless even though he had obviously control of the nuclear codes and all the rest of
it. And then as time went on it just got worse and worse and worse and worse to the point where even
when he was gone he was not gone and there were all those awful riots and things like that. Again,
how do you feel now looking back on him and what are your worries about him for the future?
MH: He bought the sort of currents of reality TV and crazy kind of conflict
to the White House. I mean he was the biggest reality TV star of the sort of golden era of
reality tv as the host of the US Apprentice. And it's amazing that that person could
get into the Oval Office. But as we said, I think lots of liberal democracies are in real crisis and
theirs is definitely one of them. I definitely think it's possible for him to come back and
increasingly in his interests to try and come back because his legal worries are piling up. I
do not like to make predictions, I have no idea whether he will, but the fact that it's
even being talked about I mean why can't these sort of... I'm not saying literally die but,
you know, when you're out of politics in the old days you were out. There was no one saying I think
we should bring back Nixon actually. Nobody was saying any of these things.Now it's like the sort
of Marvel Cinematic Universe, nobody dies, you can just sort of come back up to life. No! I
think they should be nailed into coffins of earth and transported to the ice worlds away from us.
W: With the writing obviously with satire there is obviously a very serious point
that you're trying to make at the same time and there is anger in these columns
there is frustration there's very serious moments and how do you balance that where
you want to make people laugh but you also want to make the serious points?
MH: Yeah I always, I think actually in a way the best, one of the best ways to
make serious points is via humour. And I do in general, maybe not always, I try and use it,
I always say to people, I try and keep the anger out. I try and use it really sparingly
because I do think it's quite easy to feel like you're being shouted at if someone writes kind
of constantly, I mean I can think of writers who in my lifetime in journalism have written
kind of constantly angry columns and I'm just I can't be bothered with them because they're
so... I think actually it's quite a good way to get to people by making them laugh.
And then you can make serious points within that. But I do think you can use anger sparingly and so
I try and wheel it out not hugely often. And then hope that it means something when I day.
W: In assembling the columns for the book I wondered whether you had any
that you particularly liked or were very proud of looking back on them.
MH: I like quite a lot of ones that are about, I don't know,
I've sort of, I suppose, I don't want to make it sound like women's rights, you'll think all right
I won't read that chapter then. But you know things about the MeToo movement was a really
big part of the last few years. And I don't know, that guy, I like the one that I wrote in the voice
of that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when he did his confirmation hearings. I've never
seen a human behave more appallingly at a job, it was like at a job interview, and I thought wow! I
mean you know I don't want to believe too much in the patriarchy but if a man can do this in a
job interview and still get it, I am fascinated. I mean I've, you know, he was crying and having to
leave the stand the whole time and you know it's like now he's gonna decide the future of America
for decades probably. Strangely because it, I liked it because it touched a lot of people,
was one I wrote about - which very strangely in the week of when the story of Sarah Everard was
becoming clear, what had happened to her or who had taken her, I wrote a story about being
just followed just on the way to pick one of my children up from school. And it was really weird,
it was the night before I had to write my column I was going to write about something
completely different and I just sort of wrote it as an account of course as any woman will know,
you can remember every single tiny detail when you're quite scared and the things they're saying
to you and you can remember every single tiny detail. I was able to sort of tell it and you
know it's one of these ones you write incredibly quickly because it just sort of comes out, those
are always the best I think, the ones that come out quicker. And that, a huge, I mean, like I mean
thousands of people wrote to me, maybe more, about that one. And I really tried to answer as many, if
they'd actually written proper emails I tried to answer every single one because I thought it was
so affecting. They were telling you their own stories and some of them were just so awful. Some
of them were 40 years ago, some of the things had happened to their wives 40 years ago. It
was extraordinary. It was an amazing outpouring. They mattered. There were some of the ones about
celebrities I find a sort of rip-roaring fun thing to write (yeah). You know when you find out that
Mark Wahlberg gets out of his bed at 2 30 a.m in the morning and does a routine that involves
like four types of prayer and five workouts a day and, you know, I find that just hysterical.
W: Don't forget the snacks, he has many snacks.
MH: All timetabled. Do you honk Humphrey Bogart was doing it? I mean Mark Wahlberg,
I mean he's not the actor Mark Wahlberg is of course, Bogart.
W: He wishes! He wishes he had the range.
MH: He wishes, yeah.