After working in print journalism for 20 years hard, producing short, snappy pieces to order for editors often foaming at the mouth, I decided to take the more elegant course and write books.
I am currently working on the first autobiography of Richard O’Brien, the actor song writer who wrote The Rocky Horror Show.
I have just published “Inside”, a memoir of a year spent teaching literacy, journalism and art inside HMP Wormwood Scrubs.
It was published on July 2nd 2009 by the Social Affairs Unit.
Ian Hislop to Jane Kelly:
"You were a nuisance in prison, which is just what every journalist should be"
“Inside” has been reviewed in the Times on Saturday and one chapter appeared in the Sunday Times News Review section, under the heading,"Brief Encounter In The Scrubs".
It was reviewed by 3ammagazine on-line,
and by AN Wilson who wrote:
“I think INSIDE is a triumph; very funny, a real eye-opener, beautifully written and gloriously incorrect politically!! It deserves a tremendous success. I hope you are serializing it in the Mail or elsewhere? I have given it a little mention in my monthly round-up of books in the Reader's Digest and wait to see if they allow me to do this - in the past, I have only written about books which THEY have sent to me.... I shall certainly try to mention it in any other places where I am given a space. Congratulations. I laughed aloud at several places - the toothlessness joke, Michelangelo with a screaming pope, vir vehiculus albus,... What makes the book so successful is its raw honesty, not least about yourself and your own feelings about life. V funny on journalism, too, and the way it cocoons us from reality with taxis, expense accounts etc. Thanks for sending it, and for the interest/admiration/horror/laughter it aroused.”
Former top Tory and ex-con Jonathan Aitken wrote:
“I congratulate you on your book and the way you bring together in a most attractive style both the comedy and the sadness of prison life and Fleet Street life as well.”
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In 2004, I wrote an unauthorised biography of actor Colin Farrell, published by Blake Publishing.
I enjoyed researching Farrell’s early life in Dublin, his home town, talking to his boyhood friends and relatives and visiting his old school. Since then I have taken part in three documentaries about Farrell, two American, one for Channel Four, and seem to have become an unofficial expert on his life – although I have never actually met him.
I prefer sitting in a warm kitchen, with the subject of the book just nearby, helping them to explore their lives and put it down on the page in a satisfying way.