People think writing an autobiography will be cathartic – but I was just reliving the misery
November 8, 2024 12:00 PM(Updated 2:59 pm)
It is a compliment to be asked to write your autobiography. It means that someone, with a checkbook, thinks you have the ability to get off 100,000 words full of title, reveal and riveting aperçus. I was flattered and harassed when my agent suggested it. Was there really a market for an epic saga? I hadn’t written a book in 30 years. My literary production line stopped in 1994 when What are those strawberries doing to my nipples? I need them for the fruit salad! – also known as A guide to life under the duvet as we know it – hit the shelves.
I’ve been a columnist for four decades – throwing word after word into a gaping chasm for what seems like centuries. I wander into pressing issues – unwanted body hair, the Middle East crisis, the Strictly fandango – in 250 words or less. But books last forever. The idea of meandering through a subject, especially my own life, for a post-forensic chapter filled me with dread.
So I gave myself a pep talk. “You’re sixty-two, for heaven’s sake. Wait another ten years and even if the Lord spares you, nobody will give a monkey’s about what happened The Big Breakfast bed with miss piggy. You are too old for all this virginal modesty. You secretly know you’re excited to be asked. Chain yourself to the machine and let it rip.” So I tried to include the macabre and unexpected – and not to pasteurize the gruesome bits.
You might imagine that writing about yourself is bliss. After all, you’re getting paid to focus on one person in the world that you find endlessly fascinating. It takes discipline. You don’t want to fall into the delusion that just because you’ve been asked to be your own Dr. Boswell. Johnson, that everything you have ever thought or eaten matters a great deal. The process is a long process. What are you wearing: your braces? The boss who petted you and called you “sweetie”? The magazine editor who tried to ruin your TV prospects?
And then what do you leave out: the time, place and date you lost your virginity? Nation’s introduction to anal bleaching Cosmetic Surgery Live? The burden of overdraft?
Mention that you’re writing an autobiography – which you do several times a day – and there’s an inevitable response. “I bet you found it cathartic.” Must pass British GCSE English Lit. syllabus – private and state learners have been formally informed by professors that writing about horrible things is a psychological cleansing. Placing the wing on parchment leaves you clean, pure and pain free.
But these are things and nonsense! Wallowing in miserable times is just that – miserable. You have done your best to leave the wretchedness/humiliation behind. Now you are forced to sink them all and relight them for public entertainment. Can someone tell me what in the name of the Lord is laxative in this?
It gets especially complicated when you’re writing about something that may have seemed very pleasant on the day in question, but in hindsight is painful. Take my marriage for example. On that March morning in 1985, London was bathed in brilliant golden sunlight. I was supported by 10 bridesmaids, 23 groomsmen in white tie and tails, and a supporting cast of rabbis. I was immersed in true love and couldn’t wait to marry the handsome hospital doctor my grandmother Sybil sent me to see at University College Hospital A & E.
The marriage crashed and burned when said doctor left without explanation fourteen years and two adorable daughters later. But I didn’t want to describe my wedding day in a fractured, hindsight-haunted way – I wanted anticipation and humor. So I focused on anecdotes, like how the menu’s specially printed dessert was billed as “Délice à l’ananas Marjorie.” While sitting at the top table, dressed in white silk draped with pink rosebuds (a ringer for the cake), I asked my mother, “Who is Marjorie?” She replied: “For God’s sake, Vanessa, stop making such a fuss. I am dealing with five previously undeclared vegetarians.’ Of course, it turned out that the dessert was supposed to be a culinary tribute to the bride – the menu should have read: “Délice à l’ananas Vanessa.”
My favorite part of the autobiographies has always been the photos, with the protagonist before cosmetic surgery or on a rug in a diaper. But I have to say, it’s strangely personal when family photos you’ve only ever seen in your grandmother’s bedroom drawer roll off the presses into a hardcover book.
Thankfully, publishing houses competed for the rights to my life story and rolled out the red carpet for my release – not literally, but I got to a Vanessa Bares All branded taxi, wearing a pink dress and matching cape (much to the delight of my grandmothers who drove with me). You can still see the taxi driving around London, so give it a wave. And I hope you enjoy reading my autobiography in all its flawless, tarnished glory.
This week I was…
Celebrating…I have two glorious granddaughters Neroli Joy, 9 and Cecily Violet 2. Both had their birthdays this week – Neroli with a silent disco for her energetic, seductively uninhibited school friends. Cecily, meanwhile, had a soft-play extravaganza in the Banana Bus – a double-decker with a hollow interior, reimagined as a stuffed play area. On both occasions, I ate an embarrassing abundance of cake, joined in with indecent appetite, and had the sacred role of recording who gave what gift so that thank-you letters could be properly sent.
I have a birthday question: since when did “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” become an old doll, met with blank incomprehension by the youth of 2024? I thought it was a perennial classic. But it won’t be if we forget to broadcast it, with cries of “We! Us!”, to the younger party generation.
Sob… I’m not an opera fan. In fact, I only survived Tosca at the Verona Opera because I developed a virus that was coming out and I was too sick to resist. He was interested in attending La bohème at the English National Opera, I was stunned to find tears running down my chin as poor Mimi met her tragic, untimely demise. I know, I know – but there is something magical about Puccini’s score that penetrates even the most crusty shell. And it leaves the audience in tears, devastated – and strangely excited.
Start… The Autumn range of my 4love.uk clothing line has landed and I’m up to my earlobes in vegan fur gilets, a diamante version of our classic ‘Barbara’ dress and loads of scarves. I can’t believe I’m allowed to waltz into the rag trade in my seventh decade in Linda Plant’s august company, which you may remember as a terrifying and terrifying interview in The Apprentice. We’ve only been going since last December, but we’ve been welcomed by women of a certain age – who aren’t ready to retreat into obscurity and crave colorful femininity and life-affirming elegance. That’s Christmas and Chanukah dresses sorted.
Vanessa Bares All by Vanessa Feltz is published by Bantam Publications (£20.00)
