Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Hi everybody, welcome to this very special half term edition of the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions. There’s lots of people online but probably even more people in the room and if everybody online can see what I can see now, it’s probably one of the fullest room 9 and 10s I’ve ever seen. If you are online, definitely try to participate and just put some questions into the Q&A and I will keep an eye out on the iPad here. If you’re in the room, the best thing to do I think is raise your hand. Can you all practice putting your hands up now. That’s really good. Everybody put their right hands up. Left hands. Both hands. That’s good. Everyone, I can confirm online everyone’s very good at putting their hands up and I’ll try and make it as interactive as possible and try and get lots of different people involved as well rather than me just asking questions all the time. The Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions hosts loads of different events so have a look at Mishcon.com/academy and we always gets of lots of interesting people in like Jacqueline Wilson such as Spice Girls Mel B and Mel C, we’ve had Monica Lewinsky, Gareth Southgate and even Matt Hancock, so definitely have a look at that and try and sign up to lots of different future events. I’m so excited. Who else is excited? Is anybody excited? Put your hand up if you’re excited. Yes. That didn’t sound like you were very excited. Show me you’re excited now.
Audience
Woo!
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
That’s very… wow! That was a big cheer down here. So, we’re so, so excited because the person we’re about to welcome into this room, sitting right here, I think is so special to so many different people. She was born just after the Second World War and left school when she was sixteen, she joined a magazine called Jackie that was a girls’ magazine and it was rumoured to be named after her. She actually produced her first book in around 1972 I think but it wasn’t until 1991 when Tracy Beaker – has anybody read Tracy Beaker? We’re definitely going to have to be much better at audience participation if I ask a question and louder to hear online. Has anybody read Tracy Beaker?
Audience
Woo!
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So, Tracy Beaker came up in 1991. She subsequently – and I don’t know the exact number so it’s going to be one of the, be one of the first question I ask her – released over a hundred books, I think it could be 135 books and sold 40 million different books. In 2002 she became the most loaned author in British libraries. She’s been made a Dame and she, her books have spawned so many different television series and if I can find it, here it is, we’re going to celebrate this book here, Starrt of the Show. Does anybody have this book? Hold up this book if you’ve got the book? I think there could be spare copies. There’s some people looking a bit sad at the back that don’t have a copy. There are spare copies around. So we’re going to be talking about this book today plus lots of different things so I’d really like… Has anybody noticed that Jacqueline is not on stage at the moment? That’s because I wanted to build anticipation and have a really big introduction and amazing applause when she comes in. So let’s start low, let’s start with a very low applause and then raise it more, raise it more, massive applause for Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Keep it going.
Jacqueline Wilson
Hello everybody.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Is everybody excited?
Audience
Whoa!
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
That was exactly what I wanted and that’s what we prepared for so thank you very much. If you could describe what you can see now for people online.
Jacqueline Wilson
I can see a wonderful audience, a very glittery audience and how happy I am to see everybody here today. And pink balloons, it’s like the best party in the world so thank you all very much.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you so much for coming. So in my introduction I said that I thought you’d written 135 books. Do you know how many books you’ve written?
Jacqueline Wilson
Absolutely not and I’m not even sure I’ve got all the books and occasionally I have to sort of try and organise myself. I don’t trust Wikipedia because at one time it put in a book that I never had written in my life and from the sound if it, it wasn’t one at all suitable for children so, so that I don’t know how many but it’s, it’s well over a hundred but then I expect some of the, most people in the room will have heard of Enid Blyton, apparently she wrote 600 so you know, unless I live to about 300, I’m not going to manage that.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
But it feels like you’re so prolific in terms of your writing. So somebody like the author Donna Tartt? Yes, she writes about one book every ten years, I think, and we’re still waiting…
Jacqueline Wilson
Very, very good books.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Very, very good books, as good as your books.
Jacqueline Wilson
And long ones.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Very long ones. How are you able to be so prolific and write so much?
Jacqueline Wilson
I think because I’ve been writing practically all my life. Girls, I can’t see any boys but perhaps there is a boy or two?
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Nicholas down here.
Jacqueline Wilson
Oh hello. Hello Nicholas, beg your pardon. How many of you want to be writers? Put your hand up if you’d like to write? Some of you would. I was saying I wanted to be a writer from when I was about six. I remember I had my tonsils out and the doctor beforehand was, didn’t really know what to say to me to put me at my ease and simply said, “Well hello little girl” and thought, “Mm, what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I said, “I want to be a writer.” My mother was amazed because I hadn’t told her but I carried on and very much wanted to be a writer and I think because I was writing throughout my childhood, nothing very exciting at all, but just in little notebooks and then I did get lucky and got a job as very junior journalist writing short stories all the time and by that time I’d already written a couple of full-length novels but I had the commonsense to realise they were not suitable for publication, they just weren’t mature enough really, but it’s become such a habit now that now I’m at the other end of my life and my partner and friends say “Aren’t you going to slow down now or maybe just relax, read other people’s books, walk your dogs, enjoy the countryside.” All these things are lovely but I absolutely have to write too, it’s just become part of my life.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
You had a book out in August then you had the adults’ book out and then you’ve got another book out early next year. You’ve got, is it Sleepover at the Beach?
Jacqueline Wilson
I think it’s Seaside Sleepover, being pedantic, but yes and very happily for me, your daughter expressed extreme enthusiasm for the idea, said how much she liked the current pink Sleepover that’s still around in the shops. I have, I have decided that writing the adult book was a big change for me and I did like doing that and obviously it’s longer and more complex and I did think I cannot do two children’s books a year and occasionally it has been three and an adult book so really would go completely bonkers then so, I think from next year onwards it might be – fingers crossed – one adult book, but certainly always one children’s book, as special as I can make it.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And then obviously your first novel was published was it 1972?
Jacqueline Wilson
Probably. I’m a bit vague when it comes to numbers.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And then Tracy Beaker was 1991. Was that a real shock when you’ve been writing for so long and it was so well received and sold so many copies?
Jacqueline Wilson
I, I was amazed actually. I knew I wanted to write this book about this naughty little girl who, you, certainly the television version often made parents passing the television sigh and think “why are they putting this dreadful child on television?” but I, I’d hoped it would do well but it was a few years before it was made into a television series and nobody in television actually expected it to do anything very much and so it was a big surprise to all of us when it did become a hit and up until about two years ago there was some kind of a Tracy thing on the television and poor Dani Harmer, her entire acting life, she has had to be Tracy Beaker and the last episode and the last book is about Tracy grown up with her daughter Jess and she now has a foster daughter too, so it’s come full circle.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And at what point up until Tracy Beaker came out were you a fulltime writer or did you have to do something else to supplement?
Jacqueline Wilson
I used to write magazine stories and I used to in the morning, and I mean I would take my daughter to school and then I would work really hard in the morning for about three hours and seemed to write in retrospect an enormous amount then but that was just to earn some money and then after lunch I had a glorious hour or two when I could write my actual book and then go and collect my daughter from school and that would be fine. And now I tend to write kind of the opposite way, I write whatever I’m currently writing quite early in the morning after I’ve you know taken the dogs out, fed the cat, fed four chickens now, I’ve become a real country lady, and then I sit up in bed and write and that’s my special time and not a lot of people phone or text or send emails really quite early so I can have an hour, a couple of hours working on that and then the rest of the day is full of replying to emails, maybe planning some article or a short story or having a delightful trip out like today, but they’re the extra things, the writing bit gets done early in the morning now.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And I heard a really interesting story about how you came up with the name for Tracy Beaker, could you share that?
Jacqueline Wilson
Okay. I always like to get the name for my characters almost at the beginning. I knew I wanted to write about this little girl stuck in a children’s home. I wrote it over thirty years ago where there were more children’s homes, now the policy is to get as many children as possible who are in the care system into a foster home so they have experience of family environment so, there have, I think it’s a good thing, there are fewer children’s home but there still are some and I’ve got very involved with the whole fostering movement and the proud ambassador for the East Sussex Foster Care Association and I used to do things each year for The Fostering Network and so it’s fascinating to see you know what a wonderful thing many, many foster parents do for delightful kids, although you know some can be a bit of a handful like Tracy herself and I’ve rambled on and I’ve forgotten the actual point. Ah ha, Tracy’s name, that’s it. So, I thought right, I would like to write about this, this little girl in a children’s home and then I though well she’s going to have to be quite feisty because she’s had a tough time so far and she keeps wanting to see her mum and mum just, I don’t know why, maybe just cant be bothered, whatever. So she, she’s stuck there and I thought right, what sort of name would be good and I wanted a bouncy sort of name but not one that every second little girl is called so, I thought Tracy would be a good idea and I tried very hard indeed to think of the right sort of surname because I knew I was going to call it The Story of Tracy… but I wanted something that just sounded right, something a little bit odd but no so quirky it just seemed ridiculous and truthfully, I do spend quite a lot of time in the morning in my bathroom daydreaming and I in those days, I just had quite an ordinary cramped bathroom and no shower or anything so I was lying back in my bath sort of luxuriating and looking all round the bathroom idly for any idea for an actual adequate surname and you know, being a little silly I was thinking Tracy Soap, Tracy Flannel, Tracy Tap, Tracy Toothbrush, Tracy Toilet and these ideas just seemed ridiculous so I thought well I’m never, ever going to find something as prosaic and yet important as a surname here. So I got on with washing my hair and in those days I didn’t even have a shower attachment, I just used to keep an old Snoopy beaker on the end of the bath and then run it under the taps and the sluice my hair clean, so I picked up this beaker and thought, “Tracy Beaker” and there was a little shiver that ran up my arms and I had no idea that this would be a name that sometimes where I used to live when Tracy had become really popular on television and they saw me walking along and they would mutter and they didn’t say, “Jacqueline Wilson”, it was “Tracy Beaker”, “Tracy Beaker” and so I’m deeply grateful to her.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And has anybody here been to the country Iceland? A few people. Can anybody speak Icelandic? One person here. She’s a plant. So, did you know that so many of Jacqueline Wilson’s stories have been translated into so many different languages and have been translated into Icelandic so, Anna, do you, happy to come up on stage? Shall we welcome Anna on stage?
Anna
Thank you both.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So is this a book that is in Icelandic?
Anna
This is Lola Rose by Jacqueline and it’s printed in 2004 and it was the first book by Jacqueline that I read, with many, many more to follow, some in Icelandic, some in English but yeah.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And would you read out, so, Jacqueline you didn’t know that your books were in Icelandic until about ten minutes ago.
Jacqueline Wilson
I had no idea and I’m very proud.
Anna
So, the first sentence reads “Hefur þú einhvern tíma hugsað um hvað þú myndir gera ef þú myndir vinna í lottóinu” 16.15 and that means “Have you ever thought about what you would do if you won the lottery?” Does that sound familiar?
Jacqueline Wilson
Yes. I’ll take your word for it.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And were you allowed to read this book at the time?
Anna
No. So, this book was given to my older sisters as a present from our family members and I was a bit too young, I think I was five or six when my sisters received it and so I saw them read it and I thought it was awfully grownup and very cool so, I would sneak into my sisters’ rooms and I would take the book off the bookshelves and stand and read one page at a time with one ear open in case my mum would come by and catch me reading a book that wasn’t appropriate for a six year old, but I absolutely devoured it and I stole many more books from my sisters and returned to my sisters, and I also went to my local library and I read every Jacqueline Wilson book in Icelandic there and so many books that didn’t even realise that Jacqueline Wilson was English, I just felt that she was Icelandic with a very exotic name and then I moved abroad and I saw that she had tons of additional books that weren’t in my house or at my local library in Iceland and I read all of those as well and here I am, training to be a solicitor and speaking English every day and I think Jacqueline’s books are definitely to thank for that.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Wow.
Jacqueline Wilson
I feel so proud.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Have you ever been to Iceland?
Jacqueline Wilson
Never.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Never?
Jacqueline Wilson
Never.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Who knew you were so big in Iceland?
Jacqueline Wilson
Well this is a wonderful extra addition to my day.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And would you like to ask Jacqueline some questions, Anna?
Anna
Yes. So, in your About the Author of some of your books, it has the fun fact about you which is that you wrote your first book when you were nine years old.
Jacqueline Wilson
Now doesn’t that sound impressive but it wasn’t a proper book, I think it was just a remark that I made one time when I was giving a talk like this and it’s been picked up. I called it a book bit it wasn’t really, it was a purloined notebook from the stationery cupboard at school and I, I had asked my teacher, who was one of these really lovely people who made every child no matter how unpromising, feel that they were special and he’d already told me that he liked the stories that I’d written so I said “could I write a novel in this, please sir?” and he didn’t laugh, bless him, at the terminology ‘novel’ and he said “yes, of course, this will be perfect” and so I wrote a story that was probably, I don’t know, twelve pages, fifteen pages at the most, but interestingly it was about a family with problems and I’d drawn a picture of them all on the front and the mother actually had worry lines across her forehead and there was an elder sister who kept going out with boys instead of doing her homework and then there was an earnest girl with glasses who liked to read – that was based on me – and then a girl who liked acting, they were twins, and then there was a little girl who was very fierce and stroppy and bullied her little brother and she had wild curls, so I think she was an infant version of Tracy Beaker even at nine years old and I didn’t finish it so, if any of you are wanting to be writers and you start writing, do not worry if you run out of steam because I hardly ever completed any of my notebooks. My mum always moaned and said it was a waste of a good exercise book and wanted me to if I was writing another story to start behind the one that was unfinished, but I didn’t like that idea, I needed a new notebook so, but it’s just because you’re learning, the same as if you’re starting, wanting to be a footballer, you can’t immediately you know be an amazing, world-class footballer, you’ve got to do keepy-uppy and bashing it against the wall and things like that, but eventually, thank goodness, it paid off.
Anna
That’s really interesting because those initial characters in your first novel, I will call it a novel, seem to be fleshed out in later books, like the illustrated mum with worry lines in My Sister Jodie about an older sister. What kind of books did you read growing up that inspired you to continue giving that gift to other readers?
Jacqueline Wilson
I liked Noel Streatfield. Has anybody here ever read Noel Streatfield? If any of you like ballet, I think her very best book was Ballet Shoes, which is still in print. I liked her because her children seemed quite realistic and if they, there were sisters, they would often argue or try to squash the little one if she showed off a lot and so I loved her books. I quite liked Pamela Brown’s books. I was interested in her because she wrote her first story when she was only about fifteen, sixteen, that actually got published. And there’s a very obscure book called Nancy and Plum by Betty McDonald, I don’t think it’s in print anymore, it’s an American book but it was about two little girls in an orphanage with a very fierce lady in charge and they run away and I just loved that story. They became my imaginary friends and you know I’d walk to school by myself because in those days you, your mum or dad didn’t take you by car or walk with you, you know you just, once you were past six or seven you walked yourself and I played that they were walking along with me and that was a truly inspirational book and I still cherish my own copy of it.
Anna
Thank you so much for sharing that and I think my final question before I hand over to someone of a younger generation, would be you write about a lot of themes that are considered grown-up, or at least I considered them very grown-up when I was younger and they’re sometimes sensitive about violence in the home and the foster network, as you spoke about earlier, how do you continue sort of reaching out to those communities and listening to people’s experiences to ensure that they’re accurately reflected in your books?
Jacqueline Wilson
I do try very hard to, as I got much older inevitably people write to me about this or that or I belong to a particular charity to do with children and so I’m learning all the time but also I, every now and then somebody says why don’t you write about a really loving family and everybody gets on well, and I sometimes even for a silly bet I’ve said okay, okay, next book, that’s what it’s going to be about but even a book that I started when it was Christmas and it was all going so well, somehow the brain and the hand took no notice of what I’d said I’d do and immediately something awful happened at the very first chapter. It seems to be the way I am but I try and make them try hard to have a happy ending and I do try hard not to have anything that would seriously worry a child and there’s nearly always some kind adult, I mean you have Lola Rose and it is a very sad book in some ways but they have an Aunty Barbara and an Aunty Barbara, a sort of wonderful, kind woman who the moment she steps her foot inside their flat, those children relax, they know she’s going to feed them and look after them and make everything as right as she possibly can and so I try to reassure, although I know that there was something on Twitter or whatever running along about, it was a tease but “Jacqueline Wilson traumatised me when I was a child”. And now, because of the adult book Think Again, there’s a sort of catchphrase going around on the internet sort of “Jacqueline Wilson raised me” and my clever publishers picked up on that and for a while, I think it’s still ongoing, if you buy the book from a rather classy chain that is all around the country, the only one left now really, you can buy a pink t-shirt with “Jacqueline Wilson raised me” and I have got one myself and I think I’m seeing me very grown-up daughter next week, who is not a t-shirt girl at all but I’m going to put it on her and take a photograph and somehow or other get someone to help me put it online because she’s the only person that literally can say that that is true.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you so much, Anna. Round of applause for Anna. Has anybody got slightly older Jacqueline Wilson books that they’ve brought along? A few people. That’s a massive hand up, where’s your one, do you want to hold it up? Oh, we have to get it out the bag. Which one have you got? This is Diamond, yeah, that’s an older one, this is an older one here, there’s an older one back there, what’s that one? Double Act. And then this is the newer one. Does it, can anybody spot the difference? What’s the difference? The illustrations look different.
Jacqueline Wilson
Clever girl.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So this is Nick Sharratt. You can see Nick Sharratt’s name here. And then this is Rachael Dean. What happened?
Jacqueline Wilson
Lots, lots of people have said to me, “Have you broken friends with Nick?” I’ve had a wonderful, wonderful kind of artistic partnership with Nick Sharratt, for which I am deeply grateful but during the Covid pandemic, as many people do, he had time to actually reassess his life and what he really wanted to do was to do really elaborate picture books and take a long, long time on them and he had been so wonderful and so devoted to illustrating my books and for a few other authors too, and he just felt he couldn’t spread himself around any more so he thought it was time that he stopped and just concentrated on his own work. I expect a lot of you who’ve seen his You Choose books and they are becoming more and more detailed and fantastic and he was brave enough to come and tell me face to face and I was horrified but I understood, I really, really did and thought he was very, very courageous to, to just come out with it just like that, because we’re old friends, we’ve been on holiday together, we’ve celebrated all sorts of things together and, and we are still friends and he live…
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
It’s not like The Beatles or Oasis splitting up? No.
Jacqueline Wilson
Not at all. We, we see each other several times a year and the wonderful thing also about Nick is that he makes fantastic cakes and whether I go to visit him or he comes to visit me, he always bears a tin with a wonderful cake in it and we chat about everything and are great, good friends, but of course when, when he said this I, I had to phone my agent and say guess what, Nick’s not illustrating my books any more and I thought she might say well, that’s okay Jackie, you know your books are fine, we’ll, you know, it’s the text that matters. She said oh my god, what are we going to do, it’s the brand. So I said I’m sure we’ll find somebody else and we did, we found Rachael Dean and she was wonderful because there were several illustrators given the task of illustrating so, I think it was the Primrose Railway Children, they were given part of the text and had to illustrate it and Rachael was just, she just hit the ground running, she really did. She’s very young, very keen, very dynamic on stages, as you can actually agree with me there and I’m so lucky, I love, I didn’t want someone to be the same as Nick and copy him, I wanted something completely different and I think her covers are very, very attractive, plus I have no idea whether it was a change from the publishers or Rachael herself, you get 2 for 1 covers and I wonder if you’ve discovered that with The Star of the Show which is about my girl Tess and the pantomime and sort of inside there’s Cinderella on stage and all these little children are mice and so, and each of the books you know has their own little picture so, if you want to keep the cover very carefully, the book still looks pretty and I just, just love that, I think it, it really looks attractive.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And I was again listening to some different interviews you’d done with Elizabeth Day and when you were on Desert Island Discs and you talked about your relationship with technology, how would you describe your relationship with technology?
Jacqueline Wilson
I get very frustrated with modern technology and okay, I, every child in the room will be astonished, that is my phone. It might bring back memories for some of the oldest of you. I mean, it’s a little bit artful because it’s so wonderful not to have to concentrate on emails and everything else if I’m out and about and having a lovely day like today. I mean, I can text on it, I can phone on it, that’s about all. I have to have a computer, I mean I couldn’t inflict type written work on everybody. I really, really long for the days of a typewriter where twice I have lost things on my computer but I have found a most extraordinary guy called Gary who manages to really work hard and get things back for me even when would you believe, it wasn’t my two dogs, it was one of my dogs and somebody else’s dog we were looking after. I had my computer open and they were jumping up at me and I was silly, I should have shut my computer up but I’d actually finished a book and was just doing the final little details before I could send it off and I think what happened, one of them put a poor up for delete and the other one put a paw up for delete all and then suddenly, ah, my new novel, gone! And instead of thinking right, calm down, find an expert, I was trying all sorts of things, my partner was, somebody else in the village was. We were making it harder and harder and harder and then at last somebody recommended Gary and he came along and because it was during Covid when none of us could have haircuts, you know his hair was like this and, but he had this sort of smile on his face and he said, “It’s okay, I’ll see what I can do” and it took I would say about an hour tops and that was it, he managed to get everything back again. Then, then not exactly the same thing happened but Apple itself to think I was, possibly because I ignore some of the bossy remarks that it tells me I have to do, thought I was somebody trying to hack into my own computer system and immediately hid all my files and, and that was unnerving and I phoned Gary and instead of being, “Don’t worry Jacqueline, I’ll come”, it was “Ooh, that sounds bad. Ooh, that sounds very bad.” I was practically weeping but he worked his magic all over again.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
You should dedicate the book to him.
Jacqueline Wilson
I have.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Really?
Jacqueline Wilson
I have, I have. It was, I have been asked to do just two books with, using Enid Blyton’s Far Away Tree characters and, and that Enchanted Wood, which were my favourite books when I was a very little girl and so I became like and Enid Blyton, but not quite, and had my own characters and my own “magic lands above” but Silky the Fairy who is adored when I was six say, and Moonface and everything, they’re still there untouched and that was the book that he brought back, The Magic Faraway Tree A Christmas Adventure, talk about a long title, and, and if, if you look at the paperback of that is out, I think and you see it was, it’s dedicated to Gary Freemantle, because I thought I wanted his name so if anybody wants to go to him they can and a sort of something like “a magic whizz at computers” so, yeah.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Last time I spoke to you, I think your broadband had been down for three weeks. Is it back now?
Jacqueline Wilson
That you must blame BT. I do live in the country and we haven’t got full fibre broadband and copper wiring isn’t happy in the country, particularly when you’ve had flooding and actually, no, it hasn’t come back but I have a now Chinese sort of thing in a corner installed by the magic Gary and that is working. Fingers crossed.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Wow, feels like we should all get in contact with Gary. Maybe he could work for Mishcon and sort out some of the problems here. In terms Netflix, how do you watch Netflix?
Jacqueline Wilson
We can’t get Netflix because apparently you have to have, I don’t what they’re measured in, I mean the best we’ve ever had before the Chinese thingy was 8 and sometimes it went down to 1 but I believe your average person gets about 40, something like that, whatever they are.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah.
Jacqueline Wilson
And apparently you have to have that much to get Netflix.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Wow.
Jacqueline Wilson
But we have best friends in the village who whenever there’s something we really want to see, we have a Saturday night movie night courtesy of Netflix and, and Nick can show off his brand new, elaborate air fryer thingy and we provide the wine.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
This isn’t Nick Sharratt, is it?
Jacqueline Wilson
Not, a different Nick and then we all watch something that we all want to see so that’s great.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Wow. That’s good inspiration for us all, so no smartphone and no Netflix and no broadband and then we can be a prolific writer and be very successful. No, but let’s just have an audience question, shall we have an audience question. Remember I said that you had to both hands up really high if you wanted to ask a question. Go, go, go! Both hands up really high. Look at these guys over here and with amazing face paint. If you’re asking a question, it’s really important that we get a microphone so everybody online can hear you. Do you want to pass it down to maybe the girl in pink here with the amazing face paint.
Girl
How do you get the theme for your book and how you’re going to write and, because in this there’s a girl who wants to go on stage and be in Cinderella. How do you come up with that stuff?
Jacqueline Wilson
Well that came from, I was reading a book about Victorian theatres because I love the Victorians and I’ve written quite a few books set in Victorian times and actually Star of the Show is set in Victorian times so, I wasn’t really doing it for research, I’m just interested and this person was writing about Victorian pantomimes, which were much, much more elaborate, I mean with Cinderella, you would have a really big coach, big enough for a person to get inside, you would have Shetland ponies on the stage and you had loads and loads of little star performers. Who would like to be a little fairy in a pantomime? Yes? As I say lots and lots of people would love that but I don’t think, they must, no I think even the child performers in Matilda are over 12, I think they have to be and but in Victorian times you could have children as young as 6 or 7 performing in say a three hour pantomime in the evening. Sometimes it didn’t finish till about 11 o’clock and these were mainly children from the poorer bits of London and then at 11 o'clock they could be seen in little troops walking all the way home. Imagine if you did that, it just struck me as such an amazing thing and dangerous and yet often these children were the sole wage earner for their families, so I thought I want to write a book about one of them and so I had my Tess who’s, the family had been abandoned and again what a terrible thought nowadays if, if for whatever reason you didn’t have anybody there to look after you, you would be taken into care and put into a children’s home and people would try hard to look after you. In Victorian times, well the only real place that they could think of to put you was the workhouse which was a very bleak and frightening place so, and most people certainly didn’t want to end up in the workhouse so, these children are very, very determined to earn their own money and look after themselves, which they do and the oldest girl takes in washing because no washing machines in Victorian times and posh ladies didn’t like to get their hands wet so they sent out their washing and washing was a real bore then because you had to sort of boil it all up in a copper and then you had to rinse it and rinse it and then you had to thread it through a mangle turning the handle, it was a really difficult job and so the eldest sister is fed up with that. Connor, the oldest son, he works in a market and sort of tries, he’s got what they call the gift of the gab and tries to sell tea sets to ladies and make them think they’re having a bargain and little brother Tommy actually helps out and maybe collects the money and there’s a baby, little Ayda, who doesn’t do anything very much but be in her homemade pram and cry a bit, poor little thing, but Tess who is about, though she looks younger, she hasn’t really got any domestic skills and all she loves to do is dance, she’s never been trained but when she has to take the little kids to the park you know she dances around, maybe somebody might fling a ha’penny at her or something but she hasn’t got any idea about theatres and she certainly doesn’t know about pantomimes but then she meets up with this really well to do little boy called Cedric, who’s rather in awe of her, and he tells all about the pantomime he’s seen and she listens absolutely enthralled and the idea of being up on stage and being a fairy or a little mouse or something and have all these costumes, she thinks I can do that but of course she can’t do that because she’s not been trained, she doesn’t really know much about it but she’s a pretty determined child so if you read the book you’ll find out whether she succeeds or not. Certainly she wants to be star of the show, but can she be?
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Has anybody read the book already? Sonds like you’ve read the book already. A few people have. We’ve got lots of copies here. I’m going to try and get somebody else up on stage. Has anybody noticed Jacqueline’s amazing boots? Where are they from?
Jacqueline Wilson
I, I live quite near Brighton and there are a lot of very sort of trendy shops in Brighton and there’s this one shoe shop, believe it or not these are a restrained pair of shoes, some of them are multicoloured, some of them have got sort of different paintings on them, they’re all wonderful and because I’m often a black and silver person, I saw these and I thought I have to have them and they’re extremely comfortable and not desperately expensive so…
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Wow! So this is a segue into somebody who is going to come up on stage with, if possible, even more amazing shoes so we can look at the shoes as they come up on stage. So, Bobby, do you want to come up on stage. Round of applause for Bobby. And the shoes.
Jacqueline Wilson
And aren’t they superb. My shoes are hiding themselves.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And where’s your shoes from, Bobby?
Bobby
The shop called Irregular Choice in Brighton.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
In Brighton as well.
Jacqueline Wilson
Oh Brighton. Brighton’s very good.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Exactly. So if you want good shoes, key takeaway, go to Brighton. When, do you remember when you first started reading Jacqueline Wilson, Bobby?
Bobby
I think the first book I read was probably Tracy Beaker and it really inspired me and I’ve read lots of Jacqueline Wilson’s books ever since.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And have you read the book that Anna had? Lola Rose.
Bobby
No, because it’s slightly too grown up for me.
Jacqueline Wilson
That’s very sensible. Very sensible.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So how come Anna was reading? How old were you Anna when you were reading it?
Anna
I was six or seven.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Six or seven. How old are you Bobby?
Bobby
Ten.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Ten, and still not, wow.
Anna
Sorry.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Would you like to ask any questions to Jacqueline Wilson, Bobby?
Bobby
So, my grandparents live in Sussex, so I go up there a lot, yeah. How does Sussex and the countryside inspire you for your book?
Jacqueline Wilson
Well, interestingly, it really does because I moved there and almost immediately started writing The Primrose Railway Children and relatively near where I live, there is a steam railway called The Bluebell Railway Children and I loved the books of a woman who lived in Edwardian times called Edith Nesbit, who wrote The Railway Children and I thought I’m not exactly copying her but I thought she can inspire me so, because she, she certainly once or twice took little bits and pieces from other people’s books and I didn’t think she’d mind and I think we’d have a reasonable amount in common because she was into silver jewellery and I am, and she particularly liked a shop called Liberties and I went to Liberties at lunchtime today so, and, and so The Primrose Railway Children, it’s set in the countryside and I, I just took the situation from The Railway Children to try and make a modern version of it, but the, the main little girl, Phoebe, who tells the story, she’s missing her dad very much because he’s mysteriously disappeared and she goes to a field which she feels she can be alone with the rabbits and lie down in the grass and guess what, right next door to where I live, there is a field exactly the same as that and I sort of walk round the field every morning with the dogs and it’s a lovely place, it’s very overgrown but nowadays you can kid yourself you’re helping wildlife and certainly there’s lots of wildlife, there’s lots of badgers, which we don’t see but we’ve put a camera up and you can see them at night if you want to, they’re a bit big, bit fierce looking, lots of rabbits though and lots of butterflies and all sort of different things there, so it’s a magic field and so that was my first putting a little bit of Sussex in a book and then I wrote a book called The Girl Who Wasn’t There and that’s in the countryside but with sea views, exactly like my house and then, and they, her dad tries to renovate an old small tower called a folly, not like a real tower, and he thinks they can live in it and there is one quite near where we live, which is actually sort of let out as a posh Airbnb or something, I’ve never been inside it but I imagined it and, and in that book too, the little girl is given a glorious but rather naughty little Cavapoo puppy called Molly and guess what, I have a Cavapoo called Molly. So, little bits of my life have gone into the books and, and certainly the new Sleepover book is by the seaside so that I like, I like to feel, and in that book there are alpacas and when I have to get the train up to London, after, I get on obviously at my station and then there’s another little station and then I look like this out the window, if I’m not sitting next to it, because in a field there, there are alpacas, wonderful alpacas. I can’t work out how to get there and if it’s a place where you can go and see the alpacas or whatever but if I spot the alpacas, if nobody’s sitting in the window in front me, it’s going to be a lucky day, and I saw them today.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Somebody needs to Google ‘alpacas Sussex’ and inform us that later because that would be a good visit. Do you want to ask your final question, Bobby.
Bobby
So, obviously you really enjoyed writing when you were in school. Were there any other subjects that really inspired you and your writing you do today?
Jacqueline Wilson
I liked art very much. I quite liked history.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
It’s fine to say you just didn’t like school and just wanted to leave.
Jacqueline Wilson
Well, I want to be a good example to all the children. I’m afraid, though my dad was quite clever at arithmetic and he did work in an accounts office, I am one of those people that just can’t manage problems and you know in arithmetic and there’s always sort of six men building a swimming pool and you know, if it’s this big or that big, how long will it take them if one man is off sick for a week or something and I just sit and think ooh, did they like swimming and you know will they let other people go swimming and I haven’t got the right brain for that sort of thing and so, when it came to doing my equivalent of GCSEs in secondary school, I did have a lovely maths teacher and she, she looked at me and she said “Do you think there’s any point in you doing this, Jacqueline?” and is said no, so I didn’t have to do it. Which is wonderful because I didn’t have to say I failed it, because I never took it.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And just comparing yours and Bobby’s jewellery, you’ve both got amazing rings and bracelets.
Jacqueline Wilson
Well, well, Bobby, I have never been outdone in jewellery until today.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
I think that’s what happens when you go to a Taylor Swift concert and swap lots of bracelets.
Jacqueline Wilson
Exactly, exactly.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Is it true Jacqueline that you buy another ring, sorry, yeah, buy another ring every time you finish a book?
Jacqueline Wilson
I used to and I used to wear an awful lot of very big rings like this. In fact, there’s an actual, in the bowels of the National Portrait Gallery, there is a portrait of me and they used to sell it as a postcard but I have been discarded now, I’m not a postcard anymore but I had no idea I looked so ridiculous because I had a huge great ring on every finger and bangles up to my arms and I looked as if, if a child came up and I’d just gestured, I’d knock it flat completely so, but I do love jewellery and, and recently I’ve made friends with this lovely jeweller in East Sussex who does all these very sort of light rings and, and this one, she’s called Julian, and she’s got a quote from the medieval sort of spiritual person, Julian of Norwich, and she’s got that famous saying, “All should be well and all should be well and all manner of things shall be well”, so if I’m say worrying about some writing or whether BT are ever going to fix my internet or whatever, I stroke my bracelet and say all shall be well and all shall be well, and occasionally it works out like that so.
Bobby
Thank you very much for answering my questions.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you, Bobby.
Jacqueline Wilson
Thank you, Bobby.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
I want to try and get more audience questions. Joey, down here, I think has got an excellent question. Hopefully, a microphone will be on its way to Joey down here. Joey is one of my favourite girl’s names after, hopefully after Joey from Dawson’s Creek, I love Joey.
Joey
What is your favourite book and why do you choose this book?
Jacqueline Wilson
A book that I’ve written or a book that somebody else has written? Book that I’ve written? Yes? It’s so difficult to choose. I, because Star of the Show is my kind of baby, as I’ve you know just given birth to it as such, I think I would seriously choose it as my favourite at the moment. I’m also very grateful to Tracy Beaker because she really set my career off and because I like the Victorians, my very first Victorian book was one called Hetty Feather and I loved writing about Hetty and the other books about her and if anybody has ever read Hetty Feather and wondered about what it was really like, not too far away there is a wonderful Foundling Museum where you can go, you can see in one of the glass cabinets there’s an actual notebook which was, I wrote Hetty Feather by hand and that’s got the first volume of Hetty Feather there, which I never thought I’d have something that ended up in a museum, and sometimes, I don’t know whether they still have it, they had outfits very much like foundlings wore, so you could dress up in one of those rather hideous long, uncomfy brown frocks and there is a portrait of me in the Foundling Museum in amongst a whole load of serious portraits of 18th century gentlemen and the artist said “no, I want you to look very serious”, so it’s a bit disconcerting because I hope I’m quite a smiley person but I’m looking like this. Sometimes I give a talk at the Foundling Museum and it’s very odd because often they position me directly opposite my own portrait and I’m sort of looking down my nose at myself, but the Foundling Museum is a lovely museum and it’s very touching because you see that when ladies had to hand in their babies because they couldn’t bring them up themselves, they sometimes left tokens to show the child that they did have a mother who loved them and sometimes they left quite precious things but sometimes they had so little money they might give just you know a silver sixpence or just even, there’s even something like a little bottle top or something like that and seeing all these little things handed in, it sort of brings the tears to your eyes so it’s, it’s a lovely, very moving museum.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Has anybody ever been to the Foundling Museum? A few people. And in this book, I know some of you have read it, Tess actually goes to the Ragged School and you can also visit the, has anybody been to the Ragged School? Same people putting their hand up.
Jacqueline Wilson
So you know, I haven’t, I must.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
You must. Yeah, it’s absolutely amazing and you can almost pretend that you’re in school and relive the experience, it’s amazing, so once you’ve read this book, you have to go to the Ragged School. Would anybody else who puts their hands up very high with both hands, whoa, I mean look at this, this, I haven’t even finished the sentence. Can we get a microphone down here.
Jacqueline Wilson
This little girl, yeah.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Got a microphone here. Do you want to speak into the microphone and ask your question?
Audience member
In Queenie, 56.08 there’s a little girl who talks to the main character and I noticed they’re both called Marilyn.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So, in Queenie, another book, there’s always a girl that teases the main character.
Jacqueline Wilson
Oh don’t tell me your name is Marilyn.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
No. They’re both called Marilyn. Did you choose Marilyn on purpose?
Jacqueline Wilson
I didn’t deliberately. That’s so well spotted of you, I would never have, if I was on Mastermind about my own books and I was asked that, I would just quiver in that frightening chair and not know. I must admit when I was at school, there was a Marilyn I wasn’t very keen on.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So subconsciously.
Jacqueline Wilson
Maybe she stayed in my mind but, how fantastic of you to point that out. Well I will never have, well if I do have a Marilyn in a book again, I will make sure she’s very nice. So any Marilyn… I did feel in the Sleepover books, there is a rather spoilt girl called Chloe and I always have to say, particularly when I’ve been doing a signing session and it’s for a Sleepover book and there’s a little queue of girls and then I say, “And what’s your name, darling?” and they say, “Chloe” and I have to say, “To a very special, lovely Chloe” because it’s so mean and I chose Chloe because I think it’s a pretty name and, and you know Chloe is a pretty girl, she’s just a bit mean at times.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Are there any Chloes in? There’s a Chloe at the back. Don’t trust that person with your back, try and steer clear of her.
Jacqueline Wilson
Wonderful Chloe.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
We’ve probably got time for one more question. There’s, I mean, we’re reluctant to go to the person in the front row because they’re a Tottenham fan but I think we’ll go to Nicholas down here.
Nicholas
What was it like meeting the Queen?
Jacqueline Wilson
Oh that’s an interesting question.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Good question for a Spurs fan.
Jacqueline Wilson
Now, I’m actually quite lucky because I can say I’ve met two Queens because the Late Queen Elizabeth, I met one time she gave me a special medal and said that I could now call myself Dame Jacqueline and a lot of children think that means I’m in a pantomime and I’m the funny person, so that was very special, but far more special in a way was on the Queen’s, that Queen’s 80th birthday, they opened up Buckingham Palace Gardens and had it all laid out like a fantasy children’s literature world, they had a huge table that was the table in Alice in Wonderland, they had in a more wooded part that was both the wood in Wind in the Willows and it also was for Winnie the Pooh, now all sorts of fantastic things and different children’s authors were invited along and I was something called the Children’s Laureate at that time and it was my job to introduce the Queen to all the children’s authors, which was a bit unnerving because I wasn’t exactly sure who some of them were so I had to rush along the line lined up to bow or curtsey to Her Majesty and say “I’m so sorry, I’m just so nervous, your name’s gone right out of my head” and then they would tell me and I’d have to remember so that was a lovely occasion and then I have met Queen Camilla several times because she is very interested in books and particularly children’s books and she, she’s come along and the last time I saw her it was at a place called Charleston and she and some other children’s authors and me were choosing our favourite children’s books from the past and recommending them so that children might be encouraged to read more classical books and I am here to tell you that she chose The Secret Garden, which is a lovely book, highly recommended by everybody so, so, yes I’ve met the Queen and it was very exciting and I tell you what you have to do if you meet the Queen, if she’s going to decide well, when you’re grown up say that you’ve been such a splendid person that she wants to give you a medal and make you Sir Someone or Lord Someone, what you have to do, you approach her and then she shakes your hand and then she pins the medal on you or she might make you kneel down and put a sword not into you, on your shoulder and then you get up and then you talk for a while and then when the Queen indicates sort of with a little, if you’re shaking your hand she, she gives you a little push and that’s your cue to go but you don’t just go, you have to take three steps back and then if you’re male, you bow and if you’re female, you curtesy and it was very interesting watching all the ladies in their tight frocks and their high heels trying to curtsey, falling over, so you’re all prepared now for the future, there you go. Oh and that was a beautiful bow too.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
We’re starting to run out of questions, sorry we’re not running out of questions, we could probably keep going, we’re starting to run out of time unfortunately. When we were starting, did anybody notice the Taylor Swift music before we started? What, when Jacqueline is signing afterwards, we’re going to play some of your songs that you chose on Desert Island Discs.
Jacqueline Wilson
Oh really.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Yes. Do you remember some of the songs you picked then?
Jacqueline Wilson
The first one was Nellie the Elephant.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Exactly, that’s what I was going to ask you about. So one of the first songs we’ll hear will be Nellie the Elephant. Why did you pick Nellie the Elephant?
Jacqueline Wilson
Because it was a song from my childhood and it was sung by a child film star called Mandy Miller and my mum took me to all her films and I thought she was wonderful and by a bizarre coincidence, her daughter was listening to me on that programme and the daughter lives in Rottingdean and Mandy herself lived abroad at that stage but she came over at Christmas and I got to meet her.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Really?
Jacqueline Wilson
Yes, and so two sort of silver haired ladies and I actually shyly showed her this scrap book that I had had of all her cuttings. She was so gracious and nice, I think she was a bit nervous before, think I was some kind of nutter but, because I wrote, I wrote Mandy Miller’s biography when I was nine years old.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
Wow.
Jacqueline Wilson
Just making it up, basically.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
So Desert Island Discs for some of the children, is your favourite like records that you’d take onto a desert island that you’d have to listen to again and again because you had nothing else, so you’ll have to listen, if you potentially have to listen to Nellie the Elephant for ever and ever and ever so we can listen to that song. When the event ends, Jacqueline has kindly said she’s going to sign all of the different books so maybe if we form a queue this way and maybe approach Jacqueline like the Queen, so curtsey, three steps back.
Jacqueline Wilson
Don’t fall off.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
And is it true some of your signing queues can last up to seven hours?
Jacqueline Wilson
Long ago, they did, that was very exciting and I think this one will be a very lovely, manageable queue, which will be enjoyable.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
It could be useful to have sleeping bags because we could be here for a long time. Thank you so much for coming in.
Jacqueline Wilson
Oh it’s been a delight.
Patrick Connolly, Associate Director
Mishcon de Reya
It’s been so, so special and we’ve had so many different people in but the reaction we’ve had of having you in and people getting so excited has been greater I think than anybody else so, let’s show our appreciation for Dame Jacqueline Wilson, thank you so much.
Jacqueline Wilson
Thank you very much. Thank you very much everybody.
Mishcon de Reya
It’s business. But it’s personal