Live webchat with Richard Madeley

test

Hello everybody on Gransnet, Richard Madeley here, like I tweeted earlier you really can ask me anything you like - I am completely unembarassable. At 57, you have to be. So fire away!

threesugars

Hi Richard, how do you find working alongside your wife in this new fiction writing role? Surely you discuss plots/characters etc? How do you stop unintentionally sharing/stealing ideas? Do you ever read the other's manuscript and think, 'that was my scene/idea!'?

Hi threesugars. We don't really work alongside each other - Judy favourite writing location is in bed; I tend to write downstairs at the dining table. What we tend to do if we get stuck is to run a couple of scenarios past each other, testing out ideas. For example, in Some Day I'll Find You Judy was very useful with fashion advice - although she was disappointed I didn't allow Diana to wear the Dior in 1950s Nice!

minette

Your hero sounds rather dashing. I am sure I am now alone in thinking you are rather dashing too! Could you see yourself in him when you were writing?

Good God no! James Blackwell is a psychopathic Spitfire pilot! He's very dark, dangerous, manipulative and controlling. Of course, he has an extremely attractive exterior... He's charming, exceptionally good looking, witty, and excessively attentive. But we the reader know (because I reveal this very early on) that the man has no heart, soul or feelings. He's a sort of human shark, interested only in himself and what he can get out of the world. In my book, no one tumbles to this until it's far, far too late. He could charm the birds out of the trees, could James.

mactheknife

Even though you obviously had a successful career in your own right before you teamed up with Judy on screen, the two of you have been such a hit as a double act that now richardandjudy has almost become a single entity! Does it annoy you that people think of you in this way? Is that one of the reasons you started writing books - to show you can operate independently? (if you know what I mean)

No, not at all - in the sense that we didn't mind at all being seen as a double act: we were! But no, hand on heart, we have not written our own novels as a way of asserting independence from each other. In an otherwise very warm and critically positive article in the Telegraph on Saturday, I was described as someone who was looking to be taken seriously (intellectually), which is why I've been motivated to write my novel. Balderdash! The only reason I wrote Some Day I'll Find You was because I fancied a crack at fiction after a lifetime dealing in facts, as both a journalist and TV presenter. Like Judy, (and I suppose partly because of our book club), I wanted to see if I could do it.

granIT

Having promoted so many books on the Richard and Judy book club, did you feel intimidated starting out on your first novel? Or was it something you were always convinced you could do as well as the authors you admired?

No, I had no idea if I could pull this off. And if I'm absolutely honest, I went to bed last Wednesday night full off trepidation, because Some Day I'll Find You was due to hit the shops - and the critics - the next morning. I can't tell you how much one's heart and soul is poured into a novel, particularly the debut one... It's like pushing your new baby out naked in a pram for the world to judge. Terrifying. But, thank the almighty, the response has been a huge, huge relief - I can't really say this on tele because it sounds big headed and self-aggrandising - but the critical reviews have taken my breath away - the Independent on Sunday; the Saturday Telegraph - they were really, really kind and complimentary and I felt I could breathe again. But even better, there have been those of you who have been generous enough to drop a personal review on Amazon after reading the book. I can't thank you enough - you've made my heart beat with pride! Or to put it another way, you've made an old man very happy. Seriously, THANK YOU.

CariGransnet

Can I ask - did you find writing fiction very different from writing fact? And if so easier, harder?

It's a totally different bag. Totally. With factual writing/books, it's simply a case of arranging given information into a readable package. I'm not saying that's necessarily easy; Fathers and Sons was very tricky to write as there was so much emotion in my family's backstory; but fiction places hugely different demands on an author, I've discovered.

In fact, for two years after Fathers and Sons came out, and my publishers asked me to write a novel, I was completely blank. I couldn't think of a single plot or storyline of any kind whatsoever. I brainstormed, went into trancelike states - nothing came. Finally, one Saturday evening, I emailed my publishers to admit defeat and offer another factual book instead. That must have acted like some kind of release mechanism on my subconscious, because the next morning I woke up with all of the main characters of Some Day I'll Find You jostling inside my head.

I had their names, ages, where they were (Kent, 1938, having Sunday lunch, and rowing about Hitler) fully formed but now in my conscious mind. And by the end of that day the whole arc my story - from the very beginning to what I hope is a high dramatic end - was in place. Then came the hard bit. Writing the damn thing.

icequeen

How did you come up with James as character? He is completely utterly soulless. I just could not fathom how someone as supposedly clever as Diana could fall for him so easily?

I loved your portrayal of Diana's parents' relationship by the way. It was really warm, and with the troubles they had after Johnnie was killed, very realistic.

James, as you know, is a complete psychopath; a psychopathic Spitfire pilot. But as I've said, he's highly intelligent and with natural charm. They're usually the most dangerous psychopaths of all.

We have a close friend who's a highly regarded psychiatrist and he was very useful in fleshing out psychopathic characteristics.

Why does Diana fall for him? Well for a start, everyone else does - her brother John; her parents. But more than that, when I described Diana's inner character, I divide her into three personalities. Academic Diana, maternal Diana, and the secret, quivering, carnal, erotic Diana. That's the match to James's litmus strip - she is hugely sexually attracted to him at a very fundamental level. That's why later, despite all the difficulties, problems and dangers, she falls for him all over again. Their relationship appears quite sophisticated and romantic, but for her, at bottom, it's deeply sexual. I hope that comes over.

cinnamonstix

Hello Richard, I'm a big fan! I remember when the whole competition scam on ch4 happened - how did you feel when you found out about it?

It was a total pain in the backside. You Say We Pay was a really charming parlour game and one of the highlights of the show. We even got Tony Blair to play it once! But there was a serpent in paradise - the production company we worked for outsourced (perfectly reasonably) the handling and selection of calls to the competition, and we didn't know that they were lazily selecting the winning player as soon as the lines opened, which meant that subsequent callers didn't have a hope in hell of playing.

Thanks for a good piece of journalism by the Mail on Sunday the story came out, and of course, shocked as we all were, whose name were on the tin? Richard and Judy. We just had to suck it up, apologise, and grittily get on with it. Actually, pretty much everyone accepted that it was nothing directly to do with me and madame, and the circus moved on. The key thing to do in those situations, isn't to bluster and flannel - hold your hands up and say sorry, even if it's not your fault. Your name on the tin; take it on the chin.

floribunda

Judy's recent book was a big hit. Are you worried whether yours will sell as many as hers has? nI am looking forward to reading yours

Oh, I can't tell you how proud I am of Judy's success as a first time novelist! I was with her the day the phone rang in week one of launch when her publishers called to say she'd got into the top ten. We danced around the room. And then, amazingly, the phone again and it was our son Tom telling us we were grandparents! What a day that was! Obviously, the grandparent thing kind of took precedence!

So HONESTLY, I don't feel at all in competition with Jude, or her with me. And you can't get into the numbers game too much in publishing - you'll go mad. For me, the main thing was not having a flop with my first novel. That would, I admit, have been a bit miserable. But, with huge relief, I'm being told by my publishers that my book has been in Amazon's top ten from publication day (last Thursday) and booksellers have been placing loads of re-orders. It really doesn't matter to me if it sells less or more than Judy's - I'm just delighted it's "selling through" as they say in the book trade. Onwards and upwards.

GrannyGrey

Apparently an author's life can be incredibly lonely. Was it odd or quite nice taking a break from all the intensive socialising that is the nature of your normal job? Did you find it lonely?
And what promotional and publicity ticks have you learnt from helping to launch all those book on the R&J show?

Good question. Yes, lots of authors we interview talk about the loneliness of the long distance writer. But I didn't find that writing Some Day I'll Find You. My characters seemed so real to me, especially once I got started, that they kind of kept me company! I really liked them - even the ghastly James Blackwell. I especially liked Mr Arnold. "Daybreak's" Aled Jones told me yesterday he wants Mr Arnold to be his father, and quite a few people have said that!

I also found that supporting characters quite often introduce themselves to me. I know this makes me sound bonkers but for example, when Diana is in Nice flower market, I got a bit stuck with the narrative at one point. I was chewing my nails wondering where to go with it next, when I was almost literally tapped on the shoulder. It was a French woman called Helene. If you've read the book, you'll know she's an extremely important character to the narrative drive in the last quarter of the story. But she never existed until she whispered in my ear (I swear I'm not making this up) "Mr Madeley... (this in a French accent) I believe I may be able to help you. I have been watching Diana for some time, and she looks SO unhappy to me... Please allow me to talk to her."

So I did, and she did, and the story took a wholly unexpected turn. Stuff liked that happened quite a lot as I wrote and it was a brand-new experience for me, and frankly, somewhere between alarming and thrilling.

Iwasframed

It's really interesting what you're saying about the way the story revealed itself to you. How long did it take you to write it after that? And did you plot out every single thing? Did you have to do more than one draft?

Once the characters were living in my head, I had to get them out, fast! To be honest, they were driving me mad until I got down to business at the laptop.

I tend to write to deadlines, like most journalists, and once my publishers deadline was looming, that was when I really moved into overdrive. I'd say that probably 70% of the book was written in France last summer over about three months. I really cleared the decks and tried not to be distracted by anything, other than the Radio 2 show I was doing on Sunday brunch times. Even then I wrote at the airport and on the plane.

I'm quite strict with myself; I won't let sloppy stuff go and move on to the next chapter until I'm comfortable with what I've written so far. I use to be a sub-editor in newspapers so I'm used to that process. Therefore draft one was quite a long way towards the final version.

My editor (the brilliant Suzanne Babenou) returned draft one with her notes, which mostly consisted of red circles around paragraphs saying either "more here!" or the more ominous "clunky!" The "more" usually referred to what Diana was wearing! Suzanne wanted more descriptive stuff about the fashions of 1940 and 1951 and I must be honest, it was a guilty pleasure researching them! I got in touch with my feminine side!

The "clunky" was what it sounds like - sentences that needed a bit more polishing, and I could almost immediately see what she meant, and would kick myself for not spotting it before submission.

Draft two took about a fortnight, and then after legal checks and typos, it was off to the printers.

gillybob

Hi Richard. My husband and I have worked together in our Engineering company for over 20 years. We have a semi retired salesman who shares our office on a Wednesday morning. He says that when he goes home he feels like writing a book about our antics in the office and can often be seen literally ducking to avoid the "not so friendly fire" .

Would you agree that sometimes It is very hard not to take the workplace home with you and likewise very difficult to leave the"domestics" at home?

I think it's horses for courses, gillybob. Yes, Judy and I took work home with us, but there didn't seem anything wrong with that. I suppose our life when we were presenters shows together was a continuous conversation, which morphed and bled quite easily into domestic and family issues. It was certainly never a problem for us. Mind you, we did sometimes have massive arguments on the way to work and our regular viewers could always spot it, however hard we pretended everything was fine!

Cheese

Hello Richard. Do you ever catch yourself watching This Morning and thinking, 'we did it better'? What do you think of Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby as presenters of the show?

Never. All I'd say is that we did it different - every presenter of any show has to do it their way. I think Holly and Phil are a very successful partnership with a very strong following.