My Fat Mad Teenage Diary

The debut novel from Leicester based writer Rae Earl is released this month. ‘My Mad Fat Teenage Diary’ charts the teenage adventures of a young Rae Earl herself, as the novel is based directly on the authors own teenage diaries. Rae Earl will be familiar to many in Leicester as co-host of a local radio breakfast show. Read an exclusive interview with Rae Earl.

Rae Earl escaped from Lincolnshire in 1991 and crawled across the border to Hull University. She joined one of Britain’s biggest commercial radio groups in 1994 and has presented a breakfast show in the East Midlands for the past 6 years. She is less fat and mad these days but still loves Morrissey and wagon wheels. She beat her addiction to prawn cocktail crisps without the help of rehab. She’s 35 years old and lives in Leicester with her husband Kevin, who co-presents the breakfast show.

Book News
How does it feel to see your first book in print? Is it what you expected when you started writing?

Rae Earl
It’s odd. I know it’s my book. It’s what I wrote, it’s my life, it has my name on the front but it still seems completely surreal. I keep touching it and sniffing it. I was smelling it in Borders to some very strange looks. But it smells so nice!. So it’s a wonderful experience but a strange one. It’s better than I expected though. I hadn’t thought about people actually reading it – one woman emailed me to say it had kept her company on the journey from Hinckley to Wolverhampton. That’s a lovely thought – that a little part of your life is on trains and sofas and bedside tables.

Book News
‘My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary’ is based on your real life. What was your favourite part to remember and write about?

Rae Earl
The book is more than based on my life – it IS my real life from the my diaries written back in 1989. There was so much in my diaries that I had forgotten about. My favourite event that I had blotted from my brain was releasing my mum’s budgies from her backyard aviary as I thought they were akin to prisoners of conscience. Apart from that favourite bits include great memories of old cheesy nightclubs that are now executive flats and days where the most pressing issue was seemingly an essay on the pros and cons of Cardinal Wolsey. Of course it was also traumatic reading back on a time when I clearly spent much of my life in the midst of deep self loathing but even that was tempered by long forgotten details – like the fact that many of us at school wanted to lose our virginity to Philip Scofield.

Book News
You live in Leicester now. Do you think you will write any books based in the city?

Rae Earl
I think there is a great book in the lobsters in the fish market breaking free of their elastic bands and taking over. I like the thought of massive wet pincers smashing through the clock tower. You can tell by the standard of that idea I have no plans at present to write any books based in Leicester.