Mod-feminist Caitlin Moran speaks exclusively to Lucy Holden about previously unrevealed self-harm, a new sit-com, and why she doesn’t want to do interviews anymore – all at a hundred miles an hour.
Caitlin Moran knows how to sell. And she’s trying to sell me. Accidentally early, I’m shivering at the end of Moran’s road when what was once a white Transit van pulls up at the opposite curb. I fish my phone out of my pocket and punch the keys with blue fingertips. ‘Is now a bad time? I’m standing on the street corner like an unconvincing hooker.’ Her reply beeps back: ‘Come now! I’ll teach you to be a convincing hooker!’ I’m thankful, she’s like the pimp I never had. ‘Give it 20 minutes and I will monetize your ass,’ she hustles.
The brothel responsible for my education is in fact Moran’s Chanel-red kitchen. Very nice rosé it serves too, and such charming cats, despite the obesity. Some people have odd fetishes and I find it best not to judge.
Despite the linguistic scattering of ass-hats and vaginas though, and the regular contortion of her features into the face of a Muppet – eyes and mouth wide in mock ecstasy (‘it’s just good to have something to do with your face’, she tells me later) – this is Moran at home. Crashing waves of skunk-streaked hair up, huge black panda licks of eyeliner erased, and a just finished sit-com script spat out on the table in front of us like an ex-boyfriend.
Whatever we’ve seen of her already, it appears the best may still be to come. New sit-com Raised By Wolves (co-written with Moran’s sister Caz) is due to air later this year and aims to tackle post-Shameless class presumption by telling the uncanny story of a family home-educating six children in a council house in Wolverhampton. ‘People assume anyone living on a council estate and on benefits is some kind of feral, texting, druggy scum who’s always cheerful and never scared, and just has a lot of sex in alleyways round the back of nightclubs’, she tells me. ‘There are some, but there are in middle classes too – look at… Prince Harry.’ Meanwhile, How To Be A Woman jaunts saucily towards the cinema screen like Dustin Hoffman in drag. That is, after all, who Moran wants playing her.
But first things first, Moran considers herself a ‘humourist’ more than anything else (picture Hoffman’s glittery mini-dress and precariously high heels). And as for the public, well she thinks she’s probably seen as a rock ‘n’ roll Marxist who talks about vaginas. Tactically then, she’s employing comedy as a star-chart system of reward. Did you take on board what she said about feminism? Then here’s a side of laughter with your tea. ‘It’s really self-indulgent to stand up and go: “this is the way the world should be”. The idea is, by listening to my idea and maybe considering it, I must entertain you – and I will dance like a little monkey on a plate.’ Plus, Moran’s onto a winning formula: humour makes the truth very fast. And when you get it right, it’ll kick you in the tuckus like a Woody Allen punchline.
Tried and tested, Moran sees laughter as both remedy and cure, clutching you tightly to its bosom like Dame Edna Everage. ‘I know how comedy works. That’s how I understand things and cope with things. Even during my Caesarean section I was telling jokes. I was just gagging all through them cutting me open, like: “ARGHH jazz hands!”’ Moran dances her hands in the air in front of us like a hysterical American cheerleader landing a double flip.
Partly a consequence of a house tumbling with ‘gimping’ kids, Moran admits she’s never been able to take herself seriously. ‘The joke should always be on you. I’m very aware of how absurd I am. I’m always ready to catch myself being a twat. Since I watched the ‘80s animation of The Wind In The Willows, I realised that I am basically Toad of Toad Hall.’
She pauses to swipe a muffin basket away from a cat more portly than Richard Griffiths. Griffiths is trying to dip his whiskers into chocolate chips. ‘You can fuck off those cakes’ she heckles, bashing the basket mid-swipe into my wine glass, which wobbles like a drunk on the table in front of us but manages to maintain standing.
Having not been university-educated, then, how vital does Moran believe higher education is for success? She huffs, considering. ‘It depends what you want to do, but with writing especially, to get out there and burrow down into something you’re interested in is quicker and much more effective. Not having any life experience is what fucked me when I first became a journalist.’
How did Moran get around it? She became a critic. That’s blown that cover. ‘I very carefully thought: “go and write about people who’ve actually done something; parasite off their careers until you’ve got something to say”. But by the time you get to 37 you should have fairly strong opinions about most things, from your pants to whether communism was ever properly given a chance to flourish.’ Moran now finds herself pep-talking her anecdotes; releasing them, with their gloves up, only when they can K.O a larger, more relevant public issue.
First into the ring: the danger of vulnerable, teenage fame. The voice that tiptoes out of the fresh-faced, hippily-clad presenter of ‘90s indie music show Naked City has an unexpected girly note to it and what seems like a carefully defined middle-class edge (or a carefully lost Wolverhampton edge perhaps). Moran looks like a child who has sat in the wrong class but is too polite to tell the teacher. Compared to the ease of her style now, she’s clearly not comfortable. And who can blame her? Thrown from a Wolverhampton council estate onto national television; famous before she’d even socialised; realising that she was both very insecure and very different from everyone she met.
When she looks back at that time now she just remembers feeling very alone. But don’t think for a moment about pitying her; Moran’s out of the building before you’ve tilted your head even half a degree into a sympathetic nod of understanding.
‘I don’t think anyone can cope with being famous, really. Or you need to be famous for a really long time and have Bono come over and give you a talk.’ Moran’s phone goes: it’s not Bono though, only her agent. She turns it over. Maybe he’ll call the house phone.
Moran’s next book aims to tackle this cavern of teenage anxiety; the realisation that, ultimately, you are alone. Recognising that her parents, and her background couldn’t bring her up, Moran chose a toolbox of culture to aid her: books, television, music. A good place to start, no doubt, but one that Moran knows can fork to a dangerous path. Her idealisation of The Manic Street Preachers as a working class band: intelligent, pansexual and empowered, dizzied when Richie Edwards became an anorexic alcoholic and a self-harmer, talking openly about his abuse to the press. Moran wondered if self-harm would make her feel better too.
‘I tried it, but I was a very, very ineffective self-harmer. I once accidentally carved the letters ‘N W A’ into my arm – it looked like I was a massive fan of N.W.A . I had to justify it by going to the library and getting into their music – I still know all the lyrics to “Straight Outta Compton”.’ Like many of Moran’s anecdotes, it’s bitter-sweet. As sweet as the promise that: ‘You are about to witness the strength of street knowledge’, you could say. Lyrics continue: ‘N**gaz start to mumble, they wanna rumble, mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo’. Gumbo is a kind of thickened, stocky Louisiana stew which I’d probably bypass if you ever see it on a menu.
It is easy to imagine Moran bashing this rap-classic out in a Soho karaoke booth on a Saturday night, hammered, and probably flanked by Grace Dent. But the potential flight of wine through weekend air is the extent of Moran’s recklessness these days. Her scrapes with the schizophrenia haunting a couple of very close friends – an experience Moran describes as a ‘massive cauldron of bullshit’ – only cement a desire to leave the crackle of the joint in her past. After smoking what she describes as ‘her entire lifetime share’ of marijuana, Moran ‘went mental’ and had a series of severe panic attacks mainly caused by Jools Holland’s interviewing-style (‘he’s never done any fucking research – he’s flying by the seat of his pants!’). She’s as likely to light a blunt now as ask Holland for a head massage.
It would be interesting to discover whether Holland ever had an anxiety-induced panic attack watching Naked City. After all, Moran only smoked like a Dutchman because of a sense that she was ‘too much’. ‘No one had any kind of comparison point to me or my mad life and I just felt like a bit of a freak. Like an animal in a zoo, I just put a certain amount of tranquillizers into my feed to stop myself becoming overbearing. I was keeping myself quiet. I can remember very palpably thinking, “I’m going to make myself small and quiet now and I will not be anyone’s problem.”’
When you’re younger you think of taking drugs as like getting on a bus and not quite knowing where you’re going, she believes; the worst thing you think can happen is that you’ll have to get a taxi home. ‘But actually, it’s like getting on a bus that can go over the side of a fucking cliff, or into space. It’s really not worth the risk.’
Moran’s new book will cover not only personal experience of self-harm and nervous breakdowns, but bulimia and ‘fucking around’; terrible things that she wants to remedy with laughter that removes the fear. She’s imagining The Bell Jar written by Adrian Mole. Instead of spearheading the campaign though, Moran prefers to think she’s just clearing a space for people to speak without a fear of being bullied, or hurt, or feeling like a freak. Moran believes it’s important not to let yourself be defined by other peoples’ standards.
And next on the Moranthology bill: socialism. ‘In the same way that people didn’t know that feminism is simply “being equal to men,” people don’t know what socialism means. They think it’s about striking. But all it means is that the things that are necessary for the functioning of society are run without profit. I want to take the fear out of that conversation. People need to look after the people. And that’s why I’m going to run for Prime Minister.’
My encouragement falls on deaf, but desirous, ears. She couldn’t. In her first week of office she reckons she’d get pissed and sexually assault Barack Obama. War would rage. Although better known for her groin-twitching obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes, it seems Obama could make a close, hot-under-the-collar second. ‘I’d shag Obama until his security told me to put him down’, Moran tells me, which I take to be a yes. She would need Michelle’s blessing though: mainly because she’s hoping for a threesome. Or at least a lock-in in The Oval Office. Picture the scene: ‘there’d be empty bottles everywhere and Obama would come in at three in the morning to us slurring: “We’ve sorted Israel… But DON’T look on Twitter now because… because some people didn’t understand what we were saying… but Palestine is fucking SORTED.”’ The imaginative glimpse alone is like an epiphanic vision of a hyper-political, hyper-alcoholic Big Brother. Tell me you wouldn’t tune in. Michelle would know all the lyrics to ‘Straight Outta Compton’ by week two.
‘If you wait for politics to change things it takes a really long time,’ Moran believes, reverting back to seriousness. ‘Cultural acceleration allows you to go to light speed in two years. It’s the sweetest medicine. I like people who are on a mission. I think you should be planning some kind of revolution if you want to get people’s attention. The world needs constant finessing.’
As for Moran’s revolution, it’s been humbly drenched in perspective. Undeniably a workaholic, she might be on the run from the poverty she grew up in, but she is being cautious not to run a lap of victory before she’s won the race. ‘I don’t want to do interviews anymore – I don’t want to bore anyone. And I’m quite convinced I’ll die of lung cancer, so there are certain books and films I need to have written before I die. If you’ve had any dealings with mental illness you know that keeping yourself busy is an enormously useful thing to do. And I’m very aware that I could be feminism’s version of The Darkness.’
As Moran swings a wrecking ball into a past of insecurity, illegal substances, shagging around and 80-a-day when she’s writing, has she left herself any vices? Just two: smoking other people’s cigarettes when she’s pissed, and droning on about socialism. Words have replaced drugs, and Moran is ‘massively OD’ing on them’. ‘I’m the one hogging the bong’, she grins knowingly. How could it be any other way?