Caitlin Moran

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2017

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer Caitlin Moran. A columnist for The Times newspaper for 25 years, she's published five books and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves. The eldest of eight children, and raised on benefits on a council estate in Wolverhampton, she was taken out of school by her parents aged eleven and educated herself at the library and by watching television, reading all the classics and learning from popular culture. She started writing early and after winning several writing competitions, her first novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, was published when she was just sixteen. She became a music journalist for Melody Maker and, not long after that, started writing regular columns for The Times covering everything from politics and feminism to musings on her own background. She is currently finishing her sixth book and writing several film scripts. She has been married to the music journalist Peter Paphides since 1999 and they have two daughters. Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.4	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:05.2	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:09.6	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio broadcast.
0:14.0	For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.
0:30.0	My cast away this week is the writer, Catlin Moran, columnist, novelist, dramatist.
0:43.0	Her methods may vary, but her message stays pretty constant.
0:47.0	Amid a contemporary landscape of unprecedented verbiage, her voice rings clear and true and funny.
0:53.0	She is very funny.
0:56.0	Her ability to constantly analyse, articulate and amuse is, frankly, a smidge dazzling.
1:01.0	She writes two weekly columns for the Times, has published five books, the first age just 16,
1:06.0	and co-written an award-winning sitcom, too.
1:09.0	If you already enjoy her work, you will certainly know she was born one of eight children,
1:14.0	raised in a cancel estate on benefits and homeschooled from the age of 11,
1:18.0	I say schooled.
1:19.0	Her parents basically left her to it.
1:21.0	She didn't sit any exams, but she did read every book in her local Boomerhampton Library.
1:26.0	She says, I believe in giddy, deluded, intoxicated optimism,
1:31.0	because that is the fuel that will keep you going long after anger and righteousness or fear have burned out.
1:37.0	I look everywhere for things to make me optimistic, so welcome, Catlin Moran.
1:42.0	You're a star columnist, as we know, for the Times.
1:45.0	And columnists, they're often hired for their ability to sort of rage and fulminate and tell the world how it should be.
	...

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