Diary
PENNY JUNOR Ihave long thought there is no analogy quite so perfect for the process of writing a book as childbirth. There is the initial stage when it's little more than a fond idea, until you sell it to the publisher. The months of research as the deadline marches inexorably nearer, the periodic panic during that process that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all, then the labour — 12 hours a day at your computer, seven days a week for three months — OK, a little longer than the average baby takes, but you get the drift. Then that triumphant moment, that in the darkest hours you thought would never arrive, when you press Print, and finally produce something to show for all the months of backache and pain; the relief and exhaustion as you hold it lovingly and feel the weight of your creation warm against your breast.
Having just put the finishing touches to Pattie Boyd's autobiography, I still can't improve on the analogy. It is just the most exciting thing — after actual childbirth — but this time I am giving my baby up for adoption. My name may be on the front cover, but when it hits the shelves in August, Wonderful Today will be Pattie's book, and she is the one who will be feted and congratulated. I will disappear like the Ghost of Christmas Past, and after 25 years of writing biography and nurturing my babies myself I am not at all sure how I feel about it. Except to say that Pattie is divine and will do a brilliant job.
The upside to this surrogacy business is that you get to know your subject almost as well as they know themselves. And after years of trying, often fruitlessly, to persuade people to talk to me, access like this is a complete joy. So desperate was I for information about Diana, Princess of Wales, when I first wrote about her in 1981, that I dreamt I came home and found her and my husband in flagrante. My reaction? I pulled up a chair, took out a pen and notepad and didn't let her leave until she had answered all my questions.
Rein with access, I thought Cliff Richard ight be a tough nut to crack. He has been a superstar for as long as I can remember — next year it will be 50 years — and I am writing a book with him to celebrate, but he is still so busy with recording, tours and television that finding time to talk is tricky. He is a force of nature: at 66 he is as slim and fit as the gyrating 17-year-old who was labelled 'Too sexy for television', whom I, and all my generation, fell in love with. We first met over lunch at the Wentworth clubhouse last year, when he told me that he only ate one meal a day — it was the secret to keeping his shape — and as I flew to Barbados to stay with him in his beautiful house (holiday home to the Blairs) I stowed a couple of bags of BA peanuts into my luggage just in case. But I am pleased to say he is on to a new regime — eating what's right for his blood type — so the peanuts were redundant and we ate often and well. He is remarkably good company, the least starry star I know and has an intriguing story to tell.
Icame home to find Mouse, our beloved Siamese cat, about to meet an untimely death. She had stopped eating and had a raging temperature, and the vet pronounced her dehydrated. He kept her in for treatment. On Sunday he invited us in to visit her, saying he didn't think she would last the night. We said a very tearful goodbye and at 3.38 the next morning the phone by the side of my bed rang. It was the vet. He thought I would like to know that Mouse had just died. I thanked him for being there and spent the rest of the night awake. He had been there for a cat. I would like to think that, should the occasion arise, any other member of the family could expect such compassionate treatment from the medical profession, but I won't hold my breath.
It was not a good end to the week, either. I drove to Edinburgh for a Radio Scotland series I am presenting about children of famous parents and discovered that my number three child, who has just abandoned the university there and was at a rock festival in Barcelona, had not noticeably packed up any of his belongings that I had offered to collect. What's more, his Italian squatter friend, deputed to clean the flat in lieu of rent, had obviously found the task too onerous even to start. Judging by the half-eaten pizzas moulding on the kitchen table, the filth had obviously put him off his tucker too. Thence to Aberdeen to speak at a Children First lunch, where my host, after listing my numerous activities, concluded that I must be 'a real alcoholic'! On the way back to Wiltshire, after a terrible journey through storms and traffic jams, my car died in a cloud of acrid white smoke and I had to be rescued by the RAC.
But every cloud. . . . Earlier in the week I had been to Foyles to hear my eldest, Sam Leith (the literary editor of the Telegraph), interview one of his heroes, the American novelist Michael Chabon, whose work I confess I didn't know. The man on my right, a devotee as everyone else clearly was, said I should start with The Final Solution. Sam gave me his copy, which I had with me when the car breathed its last. What a book and what a writer. I happily devoured it while waiting for the flatbed rescue truck, and the hours slipped by. The RAC had had a busy day. Mine was the 1,300th call out for one of these trucks. I got home at half-past midnight, 16 and a half hours after leaving Aberdeen, and boy did I need a drink!
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