Lorraine Kelly on Woman's Hour, plugging her new novel...

[WinterTrees]

Oh joy - Lorraine Kelly has decided to bless the literary world with her particular brand of perkiness in fictional form. Anita Rani (of course) in full fawning mode, expressing wide-eyed delight that it's been endorsed by Marian Keyes (as if celebrities don't all quote on each other's books because it's all a back-scratching club) and that one of the main characters - in a wild swimming club no less - is Freya, who started life as Magnus, 'a wee boy'. Lorraine making much of 'women supporting women' and 'being accepted for who you are' 'being allowed to live as yourself' etc etc.

It's annoying enough that another TV celebrity with no writing background has been given a premier publishing slot with the marketing budget, PR platform and retail shelf space that will now not be available to writers who make an increasingly precarious living from books. Even more galling that she's used this uneven playing field to promote her luxury beliefs and transmit her virtue signalling to a captive audience in a cosy, twee fictional setting where the likes of Isla Bryson and Amy George can be conveniently airbrushed out of existence. And to pretend she cares about empowering women.

Yes, exactly.

Can someone with photoshop skills change it to

The Isla Swimmer

With that pic of Isla Bryson.

Even the subtitle is perfect - Once the tide turns you can't hold it back.

No you can't. 😂

It is known in the horse world that geldings tend to be taller than stallions, and there is a correlation between height and the age that colts are castrated (tallest if gelded under 12 months).

I would rather be talking about horse bollocks than reading anything by Lorraine Kelly.

Couldn't agree more; am getting so fed up of celebrities churning out books and taking up bookshelf space. I make a deliberate attempt to seek non-celeb books that have good reviews etc. As for LK, I've never been a fan (she seems inauthentic to me) and this latest posturing just puts me off even more.
When you think of it most celebrities probably start as avid readers given that their minds are probably more creative (drama). There’s some good offerings out there, you should try a few

When you think of it most celebrities probably start as avid readers given that their minds are probably more creative (drama). There’s some good offerings out there, you should try a few

Being an avid reader doesn't automatically make you a writer any more than being a fan of Strictly makes you a professional dancer.

Equally, being famous for something else doesn't mean that someone doesn't have a talent for writing, and there's often some crossover - for example, Ben Elton, Dawn French, Ruth Jones etc wrote TV scripts. Turning their focus to fiction wasn't such a stretch. However, lots of celebrities are only published because publishers know that their media platform guarantees a certain level of sales. Lorraine Kelly is a classic example of that.

(Lol at suggesting that we should 'try a few' celeb novels - as if they're not prominently displayed on every shelf, window and front table where books are sold, featured in magazines, given entire tube and social media ad campaigns and could have escaped anyone's notice. Instead I'd suggest trying a few books by actual writers, who have made it to publication because of their talent rather than for being on the telly.)

There's no reason why celebs can't be good novelists - or even so-so or bad writers who nonetheless get great sales (see Walliams) - and there is an argument that celebs who are guaranteed to sell whatever dross they turn out, actually help to fund publishers to take risks on new unknown authors.

Celebrity novels may be guaranteed to sell, but they're not guaranteed to be read, and I have a particular issue with that in relation to children's literature. Obviously it doesn't matter if adults buy terrible celebrity books for themselves and then never read them. It's their money and their decision.

Within children's lit, the celebrity vanity projects crowd out the books that would actually make children enthusiastic about reading, and that has long-term impact on children's futures. Parents, schools and libraries have limited budgets and once the book budget has been spent on a selection of poorly-plotted books with exciting covers, it's gone.

It just takes a few terrible books in a row for children to decide that reading is boring, and that all books forever will be boring.

Are we talking David Walliams here by any chance?!

😂
I have absolute bookworm children & my lovely (non reader) MIL routinely buys them books she sees in the supermarket for birthdays & at the right age they have been given Walliams which they have all declared to be utterly horrible/awful/unreadable.

Aka couldn't agree with you more Potholes

If the cap fits...

I haven't thoroughly sampled Walliams' output to know whether he bores children to death, but I notice he's monopolised supermarket children's sections. Of the two books of his that entered this house, they proved unpopular. I certainly wasn't going to waste any of my money finding out if they were outliers.

My most recent bugbear is actually Greg James. The bookworm child who reads on the walk back from school insisted on wasting his own birthday money on one of his, because the blurb and cover made it sound exciting. He couldn't manage it past a chapter, and he reads everything. He's read enough books he loved to simply dismiss Greg James as terrible and unrepresentative of children's literature, but what about children who aren't established bookoholics?

Damn you, WHSmiths, for your product placement of total tosh.

Cross-post with @Morwenscapacioussleeves !

Unfortunately, the reason those ‘lucky to be published’, unknown authors then remain unknown is usually because there’s pretty close to zero spend on PR for their book launch, because it’s all gone to the celebrity launches who didn’t particularly even need it.

Then those celebrities get to appear on every book podcast, radio show, maybe even a few TV shows here and there, and hog all the space in supermarkets, the windows and front tables in Waterstones, and WH Smith and so on and so on.

Meanwhile the unknown author is having to work two or three jobs just to carry on writing and probably finding out that she never did stand a chance of being even in store anyway, because guess what, they’re only releasing the ebook version. Even if that’s not what got sold to them at the beginning, when accepting a publishing deal.

So I’m not sure many authors are particularly enthralled by the idea that the celebrity book releases are bankrolling theirs. They’d probably get better investment and returns if they sat in the street with a bowl.

I know most authors get shit PR and returns Bonio - although some non-celeb authors will become the buzzy ones who then get loads of PR, sometimes for bad books too (especially in children’s). Not defending publishers that this is the model. They put in PR to make money where they think it will work, and some authors (crap or not, celeb or not) make most of the money, while others make a bit or make a loss.

As for TV shows and interviews - you can’t really blame them that they interview a steady round of celebs who have something to punt, because they get ratings from people who are already popular. Book-devoted shows are better and interview or highlight new and interesting authors.

It’s annoying but celebs have always moved into new areas where they can get an instant audience. Like pop stars and models doing films. Some become good at it but it must piss off good but unknown actors.

I actually tried to read a couple of these sleb "novels". The one that really fucking annoyed me was Ruth Jones. She's so talented that it should've been at least passable, but no, excruciatingly boring shite.

Lorraine Kelly pushed in front of me in a green grocers to buy carrots and I have disliked her intensely ever since.

That is a treasonable offence to be honest.

Look on the bright side.
At least she buys her own carrots and doesn't have some minion buy them for her.

Completely agree, but many of my friends love her books. I was very disappointed. See also: Dawn French

Totally agree. I remember reading a David Baddiel book to DCs when they were younger. They begged me to stop reading it to them every night as it was so deadly boring. I was very relieved. Even now if they see it in a bookshop they roll their eyes and laugh at how boring it was and they’re both very keen readers.

Baddiel or Walliams?

I noticed in a charity shop the other day novels by Richard Madeley and Simon Mayo and had to pick them up to check they really were by THAT Richard and Simon. I mean FFS.

Lorraine Kelly is very annoying. It's been years since I saw her programme but the last time she just wittered and babbled on leaving her guests confused as to what she was actually asking them. How on earth is she still in that job? Then, she promotes clothing lines and moves from one to another. She seems like a real money-grabber. Now she's written a book. What next.........?

However, I don't mind her too much on Celebrity Gogglebox!

Apparently it's become such a cash cow that publishers are now approaching celeb agents and asking if their clients would like to write a novel. I imagine big advances will be flashed around to secure names before a word has even been written and checked for quality.

It means that the quality of fiction in this country is rapidly declining. Depth, nuance and originality are being lost to easy marketability, artificially inflated sales and a narrow range of inauthentic voices. As pps have pointed out, we're all - especially children - going to end up the poorer for it. Apart from the celebs, who will have to come up with ever more inventive ways of evading giant tax bills on their gargantuan income, poor lambs.

During lockdown, TalkSport used to get a Steve Bruce impersonator to read from said detective novels, as there was very little sport to report on. The novels are every bit as bad as you'd imagine.

"Baddiel or Walliams?"

Pp clearly says Baddiel.