Martina Cole

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday November 17, 2001

with Glen Humphries

MARTINA COLE, author of eight novels, including the recently released Faceless.

If you're the second biggest selling female author in the UK, who's the first?

I've got no idea, I think it's Patricia Cornwell, but I'm not sure. I've never asked. I really don't want to know. Wait, it's got to be JK Rowling.

Do you hate her?

No, she's fantastic, that woman. But I haven't got any feelings like that in me. If I read a book and it's a good book, I'd definitely recommend it. My publishers say I'm a one-off in a lot of respects, I don't have any jealousy or anything like that.

Have you ever acted out something from one of your books to see if it would actually happen that way?

The only one I did do was when I was looking for a house, but not to live in. I'd been trying to find a big old water tank, because in Ladykiller he puts his wife in a water tank. I had the estate agent taking me round to all these old Victorian places. We finally found one. At first the agent wouldn't get in it, because I asked him to. In the end I told him what I was doing and he was really helpful.

Your first book was written on a typewriter. How much of a pain was that?

Actually the typewriter belonged to my friend's mum. I was halfway through writing it when her mum wanted it back. That was a bit of a killer, so I ended up borrowing one off another friend.

Have you ever name-dropped the fact that you're an author to get some sort of an advantage, like a good table at a restaurant?

A few years ago, I had a friend name-drop me and they didn't know who I was. She said, ``This is Martina Cole, you know". and they said, `Lovely. Who the hell's Martina Cole?"'.

Can you remember a dumb thing you did recently?

I got a new car, a new 330 BMW. I drove up to the supermarket, parked it. When I came out, I just got a taxi home. I haven't had a car for ages so I just forgot. I called a taxi and sat there moaning, ``where's my taxi?". My car was a few seconds away. I probably walked past and admired it.

Do you have a nickname?

All my family and friends call me Minnie, because I'm so small. When people who read my books meet me they get a bit of a shock, because I'm only five-foot-tall (1.5m), I'm tiny. When I do interviews, they're always surprised. I think they expect me to be about 5'11" (1.75m), with great big shoulders and shouting out, ``gimme a pint of lager".

Have you been to a movie so bad that you've walked out?

There's been a few of them. The last one, I didn't actually walk out, because I had my daughter with me, but it was Cats and Dogs. It started off really funny, but once you got over all the animals talking, that was the finish of it. There were children crying in the pictures, they wanted to go home.

If you were a member of the opposite sex for one day, name one thing you would do.

I'd go and have a shower with the All-Blacks. Or the Australian rugby team, definitely a rugby team of some description. All jokes aside, I'd like to drive around really fast in my car, shouting at people, park the car dangerously and leap out and say ``What's your problem? You can drive 'round it, can't you?" Generally be a proper man for a day. Get into more fights than John Wayne.