Sex and the Union
Louise Bagshawe is on familiar territory. A decade after her heroine Rowena Gordon shocked her audience by baring her breasts in the novel Career Girls, Bagshawe is again appearing at the Union, where she served as its Secretary whilst at Oxford. One half-expects the best-selling novelist to talk about matters titillating and scandalous, perhaps about the racy adventures of the glamour girls in her books. After all, glitz is what Bagshawe specialises in. Women with platinum-blonde locks, wearing Prada and Max Mara, claw their way to the top of their careers, scratching immaculately-manicured fingernails in the process. Along the way they are seduced by powerful, often older, men, who take them as mistresses and, occasionally, wives.
But this time Bagshawe has come back to talk politics. She will stand on the side of the Conservatives and attempt to trounce the opposition, which includes Conrad Russell, the liberal peer. "Liberals don't matter these days," Bagshawe says definitively. Likewise, she has plenty to say about New Labour, in which she is "completely disillusioned."
"The government is trying to nanny our lives," says Bagshawe. "And Tony Blair rides roughshod over the truth. Top-up fees are an insane idea. Spending has increased, house prices are appalling, and people have been betrayed. The Conservatives have become the party of moderation."
On the phone from her apartment in New York, Bagshawe speaks her mind with ease.
I take to her immediately. She's direct and to the point. I like her no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners style.
Since her days as an undergraduate at Christ Church, Bagshawe has had no trouble expressing herself, either in debating or on paper. At 22 she landed a £70,000 book deal for her first novel, Career Girls, where best friends Rowena Gordon and Topaz Rossi battle it out over a hunky rower, setting the scene for a lifetime of enmity. In her early books, such as The Movie, which featured bitchy actresses and a promiscuous film agent, and Tall Poppies - about a New York Jewish girl who takes as her lover the aptly named Tony Savage - sex is on the menu. Or rather, it's the starter, main course, and dessert. It's no coincidence that Bagshawe's fiction earned her a place in the 'bonkbuster' genre.
Does she feel uncomfortable about being labelled an author of 'trashy fiction"? "Absolutely not," says Bagshawe. "I write books that have no literary merit whatsoever. My books are like Coca-Cola." She is, however, critical of writers who complain about being boxed into a genre that is perhaps the antithesis of literary fiction: "They shouldn't get their knickers in a twist."
Brought up in the Catholic faith-she was even a contributor to Catholic magazine The Tablet-Bagshawe admits that in her early twenties she had a tendency to write books with lots of sex in it. Although she states that the promiscuity of her characters suggests an "emptiness" in their lives, she believes that writing scenes so steamy that readers would skip pages to devour them was "morally wrong".
That is why, as her life circumstances have changed and she has "got more Catholic", there will be a trend toward more flawed characters. Her latest book, Monday's Child, has an ugly woman needing plastic surgery as its heroine. And taking the place of in-the-backseat and Mile-High club bonking will be "monogamy, with characters waiting until they get married."
But she won't give up on the glitz. Her next project is set in a "house of jewellers, like Tiffany's. It's very glamorous, à la Judith Krantz, in the world of diamond dealing." She's already done a "little bit of research," including reading about Paris and the diamond mines of Siberia, but believes in writing "from imagination" rather than in "what you know". To Bagshawe, crafting a good read is more important than accuracy. "For Tall Poppies I got letters telling me I got the skiing times wrong by about five minutes. But 99 times out of 100, people don't know - or care - about these things.'
Bagshawe clearly knows what she wants, and knows how to get it. She's also prepared to work very hard. A prolific writer, she produces a book each year. Her latest endeavour will probably take "a year and a half, as it'll be a doorstopper."
Her work method is intense and in short bursts. "You know how people have essay crises? Well, I have book crises. I'll have eight weeks to deadline and I have to write a book in that time. I write 4000 words a day, and I'm finished by lunchtime." Unsurprisingly, Bagshawe does not sympathize with people who complain about writer's block. "You want work? Go work in a factory. This is fun. A dream life! Writers have no right to bitch about anything whatsoever."
On the subject of bitching, I remark that Bagshawe's arrival in Oxford coincides with the termly Union elections. What does she think about the slates, the backstabbing and the falling-out between friends, which she described so colourfully in Career Girls?
"I think it's great," she says with audible glee. "There was a time when the Presidency went unopposed." Of her own Union career, she says that she learnt how to "get on with stuff, think big, and invite big-name speakers." That said, she is equally vehement about the Union of late, which she believes has "gone downhill."
"I'm ashamed Gerry Adams was invited. The Union should have prevented that terrorist from speaking. I would have brought it to the tribunal. And Michael Jackson, who could yet be convicted for being a paedophile, was invited too. This sort of thing brings the Union into disrepute."
In the New York-based Oxonian Society - which Bagshawe runs for the benefit of Old Members who attend speaker events and meetings - she was made to promise that they would "never invite any porn stars or terrorists."
Nevertheless, Bagshawe's experience with the Union has helped the Society attract media figures such as TV comedians Conan O'Brien and Jon Stewart, who are "hugely famous" in America. The group was founded in response to the "excruciatingly embarrassing" efforts of the Oxford University Society (OUS), the official alumni association, which she believes holds events known for their lack of participation.
"Oxford's graduate machinery is a total joke," says Bagshawe. "We shouldn't be satisfied with 'Let's play an evening of bridge.' Why should the fun stop after you leave Oxford?"
It's clear that Bagshawe is having fun. But it's also onwards and upwards to new challenges, and she reveals that she is considering a career in politics. So, will it be Louise Bagshawe, MP, next? I can see her smiling.
26th Feb 2004