In Conversation with Kathy Lette
- Apr 13
- 6 min read
Kathy Lette feels like my long lost sister girl even though we've only met a couple of times. On the occasion of the release of her latest book, The Sisterhood Rules, the Byron Writer's Festival asked me to host a conversation with her in front of a live audience at the A&I Hall in Bangalow.
Hear us chat ahead of the event here
Kathy and I will be forever connected through Debbie, the character that she created based on her 13 year-old self in the iconic 1979 book Puberty Blues. I played Debbie when I was 17 in the 1981 film version and added an extra dimension by actually surfing in slow motion in the penultimate sequence. Defying the boys cat calls of “Chicks can’t surf”, this scene was a whole lot of artistic licence because Debbie had never surfed before and I’d been surfing for four years. It made for an unflinchingly fierce feminist finale that sent young women paddling out into the line up in droves.
These days, Kathy rarely does an interview in Australia in which mention is not made of Puberty Blues, a book written with her then bosom buddy Gabrielle Carey. As teen babes the pair acted on an irrepressible urge to share their most intimate experiences with the public. And despite Kathy's Mum saying it would never be published, it was and caused a sensation.
Having now raised a daughter of her own Kathy looks back on those renegade surfie days with an elevated level of respect for her Mum. A girl’s hideously hormonal teenage years often coincide with perimenopause in her mother compounding the overall horror. Kathy experienced all this and more with her daughter Georgie who is now 31. Kathy has given her a gift of egg freezing so she doesn’t feel the pressure to give up her career and procreate.
The author of 21 books was on a publicity tour for her most recent release. This time, her narrator is 49 year-old Izzy, a single mother bringing up her teenage daughter, Chrissie, who’s in a rock band called Feministo. According to Izzy; “Being a mother requires the combined skills of a magician, chef, tightrope walker, psychologist, bouncer and entertainment officer on a cruise ship.”
We learn early on that Izzy is only single because her twin sister stole her partner, rock god Johnny (Chrissie’s father), five years ago. As a London bohemian on the brink of menopause, Izzy has been building up a vengeful head of steam ever since. Her main target is her twin Verity, a stitched-up ambitious critic. They're both smart women but they fall for the same sexy man who only brings them heartache. Why do intelligent women get captured by this type of male? It’s a question that burns through the book.
Kathy's taste in men is pretty sassy. She’s had a couple of high profile husbands - Kim Williams (currently Chair of the ABC), and Geoffrey Robertson KC who she was married to for 28 years and whose previous partner was Nigella Lawson. Her current beau is the award-winning Irish guitarist Brian O’Doherty. Not surprisingly there’s an Irish love interest in her new book. Fiarchra is learning guitar from Izzy and by the end masters some pretty fancy finger work . If Kathy's getting anywhere near this kind of fingering then she is one lucky woman!
Brian is also one of nine siblings, including 3 sets of twins, which also influenced the writing of her fictional twins who are ultimately forced to reunite in order to save their 69 year old-mother from abandoning her stellar career.
Kathy says that a women’s life is in 2 acts, with an interval for menopause in which she "sweats more than King Charles reading the Epstein files." As a friend of the monarch and his family she once danced with the man formerly known as Prince Andrew and can confirm that he does indeed sweat. But the unfolding horror contained in those files and what it reveals about how the patriarchy works has got her all worked up.
In an Insta post just before the bombing of Iran began she wrote: “Trump is a penile delinquent with missile envy. His bombs? A weapon of mass distraction. RIP to all the people about to die to protect the un-redacted Epstein files.”
Women and girls are in the firing line all over the world. They’re being killed in escalating wars in their tens of thousands. As the Queen of the Quip Kathy is doing her best to call it out. It may be difficult to understand how her humour can help in these dire situations but she firmly believes that it's the most powerful way to undermine a man.
Personally, I always think of Lysistrata, the play written by Aristophanes 411 BC in which women deny soldiers sex until they stop warring. It was written as a comedy but perhaps that could work in today’s world? The trouble is of course that women get raped, even when they say 'no'.
Gisele Peliot is a case in point. She is also currently promoting a book, a memoir called A Hymn To Life. Her horrendous story about being drugged and raped by her husband and 51 other men over many years makes one understand that there are potentially violent rapists among us wherever we are. How can women defend themselves against this?
Kathy believes that we’re "on the road to Gilead", that dystopian place in Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale (1998 ), where women have no rights whatsoever and are treated like proverbial "rooting machines" and baby producers. As exposed in the smash hit Australian play Prima Facie, one in three women will be raped or sexually abused in their lifetime. Kathy reckons that as women we need to organise better to avoid this fresh hell that’s playing out around the world.
As a high-flying comedic author she has been up close and personal with some pretty dodgy men. Her 1987 book Girls Night Out was made it into a film by former producer now jail bird Harvey Weinstein who she has described as "a top-order predator". She knows how these men operate. Her advice for women? Hone your humorous bone and become a "'black belt in tongue-fu'".
As for men wanting to become better advocates for women? Kathy is known as The Mouth from the South. She makes men listen to her. Maybe we all need to be a little louder? I think that the greatest thing that men can do to support women is to actually listen to them!
All of Kathy's books share a similar no holds barred feminist perspective. There's a fire in her that keeps burning to tell it like it is for women and girls, but always with tons of laughter. Kathy's alter ego in The Sisterhood Rules is the twins mum Nicole Nightingale. She's a world renowned conductor who, when we first meet her, is off rooting a 39 year-old alpine horn player in Switzerland. Nicole has decided to live every day as though it’s her last. She’s joined the SKI team “Spend Kids’ Inheritance” and declares something many heterosexual woman may relate to:
‘Basically, darlings, when I finally kick the bucket, I want it to be a champagne bucket ... and I want that bucket to be nestled beside the hammock swinging gently outside my Byron Bay beach house, where I’ve been celebrating my hundredth birthday ... and for my latest boyfriend to be so upset he has to abandon his iron man triathlon to race home to give me the kiss of life.’
Sounds like someone might have her eyes set on one day coming to live with us here in the Byron Shire? It was certainly a delight to be in conversation with Kathy Lette and the audience of mostly women with a sprinkling of men adored our chat too. There was a definitely an increase in cases of face ache from laughing.
