'Love is hard to find for oldies: you're always holding something in'
As an example of ageing gracefully while retaining one’s inner youthful glow, the novelist Deborah Moggach can’t be beaten. In her early 60s, and just back from the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, she looks terrific; clouds of whiteblonde hair offset by a chic pencil skirt and turquoise bracelets.
‘Jaipur was wonderful,’ she says when we meet in a Covent Garden coffee shop. ‘Lots of incredibly glam parties. But because it was freezing cold at night, people were standing around in the midst of all these dancing girls and ponds full of lilies, wearing overcoats and 10 pairs of socks…’
Interviewing her, for a piece about her latest book, is tricky because most straight questions are deflected with astonishing anecdotes about mutual acquaintances and members of Moggach’s ragingly eccentric family (her mother, a children’s author, was once jailed for attempted murder), musings on life in general and the ghastly, largely embarrassing, business of growing old – all accompanied by shrieks of laughter.
Moggach listens carefully to what you say and roars at all your jokes, which induces a feeling of camaraderie and girl togetherness, which is irresistible. Why hasn’t anyone signed her up for a TV chat show?
Perhaps they will, for Moggach, who started life in publishing, and began writing books when she moved to Pakistan with her then husband Tony, has latterly edged sideways into films and TV, writing scripts and adapting her own novels for the cinema, including the blockbusting The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which was based on her novel These Foolish Things.
The premise of the book, that we should be outsourcing our old to somewhere warm and cheap, which reveres its elderly citizens, in much the same way that telephone exchanges are outsourced, struck something of a chord in a world where the ageing population is growing by the day.
Her new book, Heartbreak Hotel, also contains one of those eureka moments when its 70-something hero, boozy ex-actor Buffy, who has inherited a B&B in Knockton, Wales, decides to start a series of DIY courses for recent divorcees. Not only would the singletons benefit, but so would his falling-down B&B – from the sudden influx of free labour.
‘Divorce is very like a bereavement,’ says Moggach. ‘You feel completely disempowered by it, which is where courses like the ones Buffy runs can help. I thought it was a good idea; courses for the divorced. When I split up with one of my boyfriends, the misery was made more intense by the fact that he had done everything in the house. I missed him more because the sink was blocked.’
Moggach’s own excursions in and out of singledom often sound more like a novel – her partner of 10 years, Mel Calman, had a heart attack and died while they were watching Carlito’s Way at the Empire in Leicester Square. Three months later, she fell for Csaba, a Hungarian designer, and when they split up, spent many years ‘chatting to gorgeous men at parties when after about 10 minutes their girlfriend, usually Japanese, would come up, pop a canapé in their mouth and reclaim them’.
Tiring of this she turned to internet dating. ‘I liked it,’ she says now. ‘I found I had a terrific intimacy and bond with complete strangers.’
But then, of course, there’s the sex. ‘It’s as undignified and weird in later life as it ever was,’ Moggach thinks. ‘Indeed, it’s more embarrassing than ever because you’re always having to hold something in.
‘The other thing about older love affairs is that sooner or later one of you turns into a nurse,’ Moggach points out. ‘Friends now find that they spend all their time sorting out their other half’s bunions, teeth or prostate. The trick is to have two or three years in a love affair before you become hopelessly ill, then there’s a chance you can stick it out…’
There are very few novelists writing at present who are prepared to tackle the grim subject of oldie sex and bunions, let alone turn it into sparkling comedy. But Heartbreak Hotel, with its cast of mismatched and misplaced characters, is one large, last celebratory glass raised to the ancient, albeit disorganised, romantic. It’s also in the process of being adapted into a television series.
'It’s very episodic,’ Moggach says, ‘so lends itself to telly well. I think it might be quite fun. Life is still happening if you’re in your 60s and 70s; for God’s sake, we have money and we watch films in the afternoons but there’s nothing for us. Even Hollywood is beginning to wake up to the idea that there’s an older audience out there…’
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel proved that conclusively, and with a bit of luck, Buffy, the anti-hero of Heartbreak Hotel, will open up yet more viewing opportunities for the neglected oldie.
Certainly, the novel is a terrifically entertaining comedy of errors in which nothing turns out quite as you expect. For one thing, the incongruous collection of singles, including an ex-wife, who find their way to Buffy’s door, are much less keen on DIY than pairing up with each other, while Buffy wonders why he is not heading straight back up the motorway to the Groucho Club.
‘Knockton is based on Presteigne,’ says Moggach, who lives in north London, but has a part-time life in Wales. ‘It’s an old hippie town; when the counter-culturists left London in the 1970s, they filled up their tanks in Hammersmith and the petrol ran out at Presteigne, so that’s where they stayed, setting up LSD factories and running goat herds. There are a lot of people there my age who spent their youth playing lutes in benders.
‘Writing this book was pure pleasure. I sat there, laughing at my own jokes. There’s humour in everything, even growing old. Just as well, as I’m not sure we get wiser as we get older. I feel about 34 and I’ve felt 34 for nearly 30 years. I find myself talking to people in their 30s as if I were one of them. Thirty-four is a great age.’
Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach is published by Chatto & Windus, priced £14.99.
Deborah Moggach will be headlining at our next Literary Lunch on 19 March. To book or for more details: 020-7379 4717, www.lady.co.uk/lunch
‘Jaipur was wonderful,’ she says when we meet in a Covent Garden coffee shop. ‘Lots of incredibly glam parties. But because it was freezing cold at night, people were standing around in the midst of all these dancing girls and ponds full of lilies, wearing overcoats and 10 pairs of socks…’
Interviewing her, for a piece about her latest book, is tricky because most straight questions are deflected with astonishing anecdotes about mutual acquaintances and members of Moggach’s ragingly eccentric family (her mother, a children’s author, was once jailed for attempted murder), musings on life in general and the ghastly, largely embarrassing, business of growing old – all accompanied by shrieks of laughter.
Moggach listens carefully to what you say and roars at all your jokes, which induces a feeling of camaraderie and girl togetherness, which is irresistible. Why hasn’t anyone signed her up for a TV chat show?
Perhaps they will, for Moggach, who started life in publishing, and began writing books when she moved to Pakistan with her then husband Tony, has latterly edged sideways into films and TV, writing scripts and adapting her own novels for the cinema, including the blockbusting The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which was based on her novel These Foolish Things.
The premise of the book, that we should be outsourcing our old to somewhere warm and cheap, which reveres its elderly citizens, in much the same way that telephone exchanges are outsourced, struck something of a chord in a world where the ageing population is growing by the day.
Her new book, Heartbreak Hotel, also contains one of those eureka moments when its 70-something hero, boozy ex-actor Buffy, who has inherited a B&B in Knockton, Wales, decides to start a series of DIY courses for recent divorcees. Not only would the singletons benefit, but so would his falling-down B&B – from the sudden influx of free labour.
‘Divorce is very like a bereavement,’ says Moggach. ‘You feel completely disempowered by it, which is where courses like the ones Buffy runs can help. I thought it was a good idea; courses for the divorced. When I split up with one of my boyfriends, the misery was made more intense by the fact that he had done everything in the house. I missed him more because the sink was blocked.’
Moggach’s own excursions in and out of singledom often sound more like a novel – her partner of 10 years, Mel Calman, had a heart attack and died while they were watching Carlito’s Way at the Empire in Leicester Square. Three months later, she fell for Csaba, a Hungarian designer, and when they split up, spent many years ‘chatting to gorgeous men at parties when after about 10 minutes their girlfriend, usually Japanese, would come up, pop a canapé in their mouth and reclaim them’.
Tiring of this she turned to internet dating. ‘I liked it,’ she says now. ‘I found I had a terrific intimacy and bond with complete strangers.’
But then, of course, there’s the sex. ‘It’s as undignified and weird in later life as it ever was,’ Moggach thinks. ‘Indeed, it’s more embarrassing than ever because you’re always having to hold something in.
‘The other thing about older love affairs is that sooner or later one of you turns into a nurse,’ Moggach points out. ‘Friends now find that they spend all their time sorting out their other half’s bunions, teeth or prostate. The trick is to have two or three years in a love affair before you become hopelessly ill, then there’s a chance you can stick it out…’
There are very few novelists writing at present who are prepared to tackle the grim subject of oldie sex and bunions, let alone turn it into sparkling comedy. But Heartbreak Hotel, with its cast of mismatched and misplaced characters, is one large, last celebratory glass raised to the ancient, albeit disorganised, romantic. It’s also in the process of being adapted into a television series.
'It’s very episodic,’ Moggach says, ‘so lends itself to telly well. I think it might be quite fun. Life is still happening if you’re in your 60s and 70s; for God’s sake, we have money and we watch films in the afternoons but there’s nothing for us. Even Hollywood is beginning to wake up to the idea that there’s an older audience out there…’
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel proved that conclusively, and with a bit of luck, Buffy, the anti-hero of Heartbreak Hotel, will open up yet more viewing opportunities for the neglected oldie.
Certainly, the novel is a terrifically entertaining comedy of errors in which nothing turns out quite as you expect. For one thing, the incongruous collection of singles, including an ex-wife, who find their way to Buffy’s door, are much less keen on DIY than pairing up with each other, while Buffy wonders why he is not heading straight back up the motorway to the Groucho Club.
‘Knockton is based on Presteigne,’ says Moggach, who lives in north London, but has a part-time life in Wales. ‘It’s an old hippie town; when the counter-culturists left London in the 1970s, they filled up their tanks in Hammersmith and the petrol ran out at Presteigne, so that’s where they stayed, setting up LSD factories and running goat herds. There are a lot of people there my age who spent their youth playing lutes in benders.
‘Writing this book was pure pleasure. I sat there, laughing at my own jokes. There’s humour in everything, even growing old. Just as well, as I’m not sure we get wiser as we get older. I feel about 34 and I’ve felt 34 for nearly 30 years. I find myself talking to people in their 30s as if I were one of them. Thirty-four is a great age.’
Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach is published by Chatto & Windus, priced £14.99.
Deborah Moggach will be headlining at our next Literary Lunch on 19 March. To book or for more details: 020-7379 4717, www.lady.co.uk/lunch