Can I go after the Crazy Rich Asians writer for using me in his new novel?
Also, something quite niche about bird seed, a good ol'fashioned summer blockbuster, and the Posh Olympics
It started off with a message from a friend. ‘Have you read the new Kevin Kwan book? You’re in it!’
Huh? Kevin Kwan is the American writer of the best-selling 2018 novel Crazy Rich Asians, which I enjoyed very much. As I did the subsequent film. But what did my pal mean, I was *in* his new book? Had Kevin made a foray into non-fiction? Given that my name is occasionally dragged online, I felt a bit nervous, so bought his new book to find out.
It’s not non-fiction; it’s a novel called Lies & Weddings, published last month. It’s set between various locations, including Hong Kong and the UK, and stars a character called Rufus, the Earl of Greshambury. I haven’t finished it yet so I can’t give you the full story, but I have got to the part where a journalist who works for a posh magazine rocks up at Greshambury Hall for an interview. Guess what this journalist is called?
Cosima Money-Coutts.
Tbf there are a couple of discrepancies between us, which I imagine Kevin threw in to put people off the scent. ‘Cosima’ drives a Saab (I wish, Saabs are/were GREAT cars); she went to St Andrews (excuse you, I went to LSE). But otherwise, Cosima definitely reminds me of, well, me, given that I used to work for Tatler and spent a good deal of my time motoring around big houses interviewing posh people about their fireplaces and Labradors. Just like Cosima does in the book.
There’s the usual legal disclaimer in the front of the novel: ‘This is work of fiction… Any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental’, but forgive me, Kevin, for saying that seems a tiny bit laughable in this context. Should I be annoyed? Should I be flattered? A couple of people have suggested speaking to a media lawyer but that feels extreme. Cosima isn’t a major character. She doesn’t seem particularly irritating, although she does ‘moan in ecstasy’ at the colour of a wall at one point, and her eyes ‘widen in delight’ at a custard tart elsewhere. (Tbf, my eyes do widen in delight at most foods, but I might have come up with a more inventive phrase to describe them.)
Writers are magpies and pinch from real life. Dickens did it; Austen did it; Queen Jilly Cooper did it. When I’m writing a novel, characters become their own people in my head at some mysterious stage of the process, but it’s quite likely that they started off with characteristics, habits, quirks etc that I ‘borrowed’ from people I’ve come across before. Any writer who claims otherwise is a big fibber. ‘People are very thick about spotting themselves,’ another writer told me some years ago, but I’m not so sure this is true. I’ve done it before, although luckily the person involved was very gracious when he spotted himself in my book. But c’mon! At least I remembered to change the name!
By the time a book is finally published, the writer knows almost every line by heart. He or she has not only written the book, but re-written, edited, and gone back over the words again and again and AGAIN. By the time your novel hits the shelves, you basically never want to see it again. That’s why it seems a bit lazy for Kevin not to have thought at any stage ‘Oh shit, that’s pretty close to a real-life person, I possibly should change her name.’ He would have had *so many* opportunities to tweak it, and he just didn’t.
Alternatively, he could have parodied my name - Cosima Cash-Natwest? Cosima Dosh-Monzo? Ok, maybe something better than that. Or maybe Money-Coutts is so improbable and downright ludicrous you simply cannot beat it. I know, I know, I get it. I am reminded of this on a near daily basis on social media. Ha ha.
But Kevin didn’t even try to come up with a parody. He’s kept my actual name in there. I hesitate to call this a literary spat because that sort of phrase is usually reserved for the lofty likes of Booker winners but, still, it feels a bit weird and creepy. Although I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that?
Picture of the week
This is a bit of a niche joke but it REALLY made me laugh over the weekend. So, a while ago, I bought have one of those little plastic feeding boxes that you can stick to, eg a window or a kitchen door, because Crystal Palace is a leafy, birdy area and I liked the idea of sitting at my kitchen table writing while watching the local birdlife.
I went too big to begin with, having bought a tub of dried mealworms which sent the local birdlife DEMENTED. Pigeons and parakeets divebombed the window; smaller birds hopped about underneath in the pathetic hope that those above might drop a single mealworm; cats hid around the corner of my house so they could pounce on one of the smaller birds; local foxes eyed up this busy scene from the end of my garden. In short, it was carnage. Also word seemed to spread so fast that, pretty soon, I was having to replenish the little plastic box with another handful of mealworms each morning and it would all be gone again by lunchtime.
When the mealworms ran out, I decided it wasn’t sensible to continue with this feeding frenzy and bought a bag of plain old bird seed from Sainsbury’s instead. The birds were digusted by this and would barely touch it, so eventually I gave up and ordered what I thought looked like a more exciting tub of bird food from Amazon. Unfortunately, they seem to be pretty disgusted by this too, so I carted the tub down to Mum’s because I thought the birds of West Sussex might appreciate it more than the birds of Crystal Palace.
On Sunday, I happened to spy the tub of bird seed in Mum’s downstairs loo and realised she’d changed the name. Instead of ‘Wild bird seed’ she’s rechristened it ‘Fussy bird seed’ as per this picture, which made me laugh for about half an hour. It reminded me of the time she ordered anti-spider spray and the bottle came with a picture of a spider on it (quite silly to stick a picture of a spider on a bottle of something arachnophobes are going to buy, I agree), so she wrapped a load of tape over the offending picture and wrote on the label in Sharpie: ‘You-know-what spray’.
Separately, if anyone has food suggestions for fussy London birds that a) won’t send them mad but b) doesn’t disgust them, I’m all ears.
Recommendation of the week
Do you remember the 1996 film Twister? My siblings and I were obsessed with it. We must have watched it 85 times and I desperately wanted to become a tornado chaser as a result. Those little silver balls! Helen Hunt! The wide plains of Oklahoma!
The above is why I hurried to the cinema last week to see Twisters (plural, the sequel). Also because it’s had some terrific reviews:
Kevin Maher from the Times gave it four stars and I’m delighted to report that I AGREE. It’s great, a sort of almost old-fashioned summer blockbuster: plenty of action, not remotely challenging to follow and a bit of romance to boot. Also, a comedy character in the form of a posh British journalist (played perfectly by Harry Hadden-Paton, son of Nigel Haddon-Paton who runs Radio H-P, for all those who know what Radio H-P is.) At one point in the film, the posh journalist drawls that he’s from ‘South London, between Streatham Hill and West Norwood’, which got a BIG laugh in the Crystal Palace Everyman where I saw it because that’s just down the road from us.
It stars Daisy Edgar-Jones (you know, from Normal People) and Anthony Ramos (his EYES), and I heartily recommend it this week if you fancy spending a couple of hours in a cool, air-conditioned cinema (it’s extremely hot in London right now) with an ice-cream.
Nonsense of the week
The Olympics have reminded me about the Monty Python skit, the Upper Class Twit Of The Year. Have you ever seen it? Stop what you’re doing and watch it immediately if you haven’t, or even if you have. I’ve watched it roughly a million times and I still HOWL at the characters (Eric Idle as Vivian Smith-Smythe-Smith, ‘who has an O-Level in kennel hygiene and can count up to 4!’) I honestly don’t know how they all finished filming it without dying of laughter. Look, here you go I’ll paste it below:
Anyway, long story short, I rewatched the above and started thinking about some of the other, terrible categories that the Posh Olympics could include…
Freda. A game usually played after dinner in castles or big houses which have games rooms or snooker table. (Snooker tables are slightly larger than pool tables, I’ve just learned from Google, which makes sense. I’ve never heard anyone who owns a castle refer to it as their ‘pool table’.) Anyway, someone plugs all the snooker table pockets with loo rolls so the balls can’t sink into them, and everyone runs around the table taking it in turns to try and keep the red ball moving by trying to hit it with the white ball. No cues; you roll the ball by hand. If you miss the ball you’re out. Medals for the last three left standing. Supposedly named after Edward VIII’s mistress, Freda Dudley Ward. The racier version os ‘strip-Freda’ which involves taking an item of clothing off every time you miss the red ball. I’m not sure the Olympic Committee would like this version but tbf they do wear very small pants for the diving.
The chocolate game. Put a large bar of Dairy Milk in the middle of the dining room table, and take it in turns to rotate the dice. If anyone rolls a ‘6’ they have to immediately leap up, put on a selection of fancy dress and then attack the bar with a knife and fork. Usually quite tricky, this, because the outfit invoves skiing gloves, and cutting into a large bar of chocolate, wearing skiing gloves, with a knife and fork is comedically difficult. Meanwhile, everyone keeps rolling the dice and when the next person gets a 6 they leap up, rip all the clobber off the previous person, and start having a go at the chocolate themselves. Usually a child’s party game, but I played this at a 40th in the Lake District over the weekend and the outfit involved skiing goggles, baseball hat, small pink tutu and a baseball hat. It was extremely juvenile but we screamed with laughter. Medals for whoever rolls the most sixes.
‘Hunk or monk?’ Very specific this, as it’s a game played by those who went to Ampleforth, the Catholic boarding school in Yorkshire run by monks. Pretty uncomplicated rules: everyone around the table has to name a monk or a hunk, although if you name a ‘hunky monk’ the order reverses. Medals for whoever names the most hunks or monks.
‘Downe It House.’ Similarly, everyone sitting around the table names someone they know who went to Downe House, the Princess of Wales’s former school for a hot minute. If you can’t think of one, then you have to down your drink. (At this stage, I’d just like to point out that I haven’t played several of these games. I’m merely pointing out that they exist. Don’t blame me.)
The Chinamid. I think we’d put this one in the gymnastics category, and it was actually made up by my anonymous friend who wrote The Chin Dictionary. I will paste his definition of ‘the chin’ below in case you’re unclear.
‘The Chinamid n.’ begins the entry. ‘Forming a seven person pyramid: three at the bottom, two in the middle, one at the top and one to put the picture on Instagram. Can happen after Stormzy’s set at Glastonbury or after the Hat Game in the drawing room.’ Medals for whichever teams hold the chinamid for longest.
Which leads us nicely into the Hat Game. ‘Oh do let’s play the hat game!’ says a posh person during Christmas/the summer holidays/a weekend away. Everyone is given 5 or 6 little pieces of paper on which they write someone’s name - someone either famous - dead or alive - or someone that everyone playing the game knows. Those little pieces of paper are then folded and put into a hat. A riding hat or a top hat, whatever you have lying around. You divide into two teams and play three rounds - the first round involves pulling out a little piece of paper and describing that person, the second round involves describing them with just one word, and the last round is just charades, no words at all. Every person takes it in turns to pull a little piece of paper out and has a minute for their team members to guess who they’re talking about. There was a period a few years ago when certain posh people thought it was funny to put Jimmy Savile into the hat every time, which meant several Jimmy Saviles came out of the hat on several bits of paper. Thankfully, I think we’re now through this. Gold for the winning team; silver for the second team.
Stiffy tossing. I don’t think this is it’s technical name, but it was a game that certain posh students at Edinburgh used to play. Some of them had such vast and grand student flats there that, whenever they received a posh invitation to something, they would stand at the back of the sitting room and throw it towards the other side of the room. If the invitation was stiff (‘a stiffy’), and therefore heavy enough to reach the mantelpiece, it was allowed to go on there. Otherwise, if it was on thinner card and fluttered to the floor before reaching the other side of the room, it was deemed inferior and put elsewhere. Medals for whoever sends the stiffest invitations? (Again, I’d like to issue a disclaimer here, please. I was only told about this one.)
Loafer throwing. I’m not actually sure this is a real game, tbh, but my friend Laura insists that they play it on Parson’s Green. Medals for whoever gets their loafers closest to the pub from the Fulham Road side.
Dosh-Monzo is dramatically funnier and that's why you're the better writer.
I think KK should have changed the surname to Cosima Geld-Hoare though.