Kathy Lette: no more orgies

Kathy Lette is known for many things but being understated isn't one of them. She is, publicly, the epitome of the brash Aussie, always talking loudly about sex and how useless English men are.

She writes novels with punning titles such as Alter Ego, Foetal Attraction and Mad Cows. Her characters talk in Letteisms. They say things like "dilated to meet you" and "don't get a case of stiff-upper labia".

In fact, when I talk to Lette on the telephone before we meet, the double-entendres come so thick and fast I begin to wonder if she ever has a conversation that isn't witty and sparky. She seems to have a phrase for everything. "The upper classes in England have a first-class degree in Further Condescension," she tells me when we discuss why she felt so miserable when she moved to the UK 14 years ago. It must exhaust her, being so high-octane all the time.

When I meet her, she doesn't let me down. She is lying, legs akimbo, on a jumbo-sized bed at the Savoy. A couple of months ago it was announced that 43-year-old Lette was being made writer-in-residence at the hotel after Fay Weldon's three-month stint was over; she will live there alone for the most of the time, with her husband and two children joining her for a few days each week. "It's a pretty brave move," she says, splaying her legs further apart. "Can you see my Fallopian tubes?" she asks the photographer. "Anyway," she says, "loads of people wanted the job but I got it!"

At that she leaps up, all 5ft 3in of her, and runs around showing me the bathroom and the magnificent view of the London Eye.

"I bless the fact they picked me," she says. "Three months in this glorious hotel with all these cute waiters! How lucky am I?"

She probably deserves it, though. Her home life - she lives in a splendid West Hampstead house - sounds chaotic and demanding at the same time. "It's not just the school run," she says, "but that emotional ballast you have to provide. It's the double-edged sword - to work or not to work? If I work I love it because it's the thing I do for me, but I feel horribly guilty and cry in front of the children and promise them weekly trips to Disneyland. If I don't, then I feel better about the kids but get grumpy in myself."

But not only does she cope with the needs of her family, write novels, run the household and all those other things women do, she's also incredibly sociable. In fact, she's terrifically well-connected. She and her husband, the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson (of Oz trial and Spycatcher fame), know
absolutely everyone. Lette has already organised four high-profile literary dinners with her friends Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Salman Rushdie and John Mortimer speaking at one each. And she'll bring some energetic glamour to this rather stately, slightly elderly, hotel.

She's so colourful she's impossible to avoid. Today she is perfectly decked out in a Moschino suit which is so decorative it looks as if a painting has unwrapped itself round her tiny body. She also has on racy fishnet tights and high heels. How on earth does she do it? Even her nails are perfect. "Oh well I'm obviously a Superwoman!" she says, giggling. The American clientele will love her.

"I'm going to go undercover as a maid," she says. "I'm going to get some great material here for my books! I am going to have a great time!"

But, once we sit down at our table in The Savoy Grill, once Lette has sashayed across the floor, she almost deflates. It's as if the effort of "being Kathy Lette" has exhausted her. For, underneath, is a much more thoughtful and intelligent woman.

"Are you saying I'm not funny?" she says when I tell her this. "I am funny. I can do a quip a minute. No seriously, it's my job to be funny. That's what my books are. They're not anguished and tortuous. They're good fun reads."

Yet she probably works much harder at her life than she admits to. "Of course I get tired," she says. "Sometimes I want to fall to my knees in the middle of the Strand and say, 'How did I get here?'"

Part of the problem is that she is trying to balance her life. "Oh I think everything's changed for me," she says. "When I was growing up in Oz I used to be wild. Then I got obsessed with Spike Milligan. I'd follow him round Australia and he got very fond of me; he used to put me up in hotels. He was my mentor. He encouraged me to write. Now, here I am, an exhausted mother and wife, wondering about how I've transmogrified into the sort of nice girl who sorts her socks on a Saturday night. Whereas once I would've spent the weekend at a whipped cream orgy, now I reorganise the condiment cupboard. Since getting married I feel I've lost some of my old identity. And while motherhood is the best and most joyous love affair of your life, it also steals some of your identity from you."

She tells me, rather wistfully, about growing up in Sydney with her parents and three sisters. "It was fun," she says. "We were a close family. I was always pretty rebellious though. I was a punk. I was a hippie. Then I wrote a book and got rather successful. In fact, I always felt I was the famous one when I met Geoffrey."

She tells funny stories about her children, Julius, 12, and daughter Georgie, who is 10 and wants to be an actress. "Goodness knows how, but she was in the last Harry Potter film. She's very astute. When Padma Lakshmi came to stay, Georgie asked her how old she was. Well, you never ask a model that! But she replied, "I'm in my late twenties, how old are you?" and Georgie said, as cool as a cucumber, "I'm in my late eights." I thought that was pretty cool."

She says she is quite often at home on her own with the children. "I remember one time Geoffrey came home from work and said, 'Let's go to Disneyland' and I thought 'hmm, that's odd.' Well, we got to Orlando and of course there was a deathrow prison next door and he was off saving everyone from electrocution."

She may joke, but she is in a difficult position. "It's hard to argue that your husband should stay at home and change nappies when people in the world need serious help. I mean, at present Geoffey is involved with the war crimes stuff in Sierra Leone. He keeps on saying to me, 'Why don't you come out, there are wonderful beaches' and I'm like, 'Oh, I'll just call Prada and see if they make a bulletproof bikini.'"

Then she gets a bit serious and says: "Actually, I have put my foot down a little more. The children are more demanding now they are older and I've stopped feeling guilty about demanding his time."

Mind you, everything could have been so different. When she met her husband he was involved with Nigella Lawson and left her for Lette. "Isn't that weird?" says Lette. "Every night, while we sit at home eating a can of cold baked beans, I think 'He could have married a domestic goddess. Instead he got me!'" Lette once got asked out by George Clooney. "I was working in Los Angeles as a scriptwriter, in the late Eighties. One night someone from the cast, a young bloke, asked me on a date. I said, "God, no. You're an actor. I don't go out with people who are paid to say my words." Years later I realised that man was Clooney!"

But the Robertsons seem happy together. "We have our own lives, of course," she says. Lette herself takes great pains to keep in touch with everyone. Once a month, she and various other women writers get together at a pub in north London to talk about their work. The group includes Lynda La Plante, Jilly Cooper, Joanne Harris. "We decided to meet because it seems we never had time to sit and discuss stuff. I mean, men get to go and be focused and quiet and think about their work and us women are too busy dangling babies from our bosoms and then dealing with schools etc ... so it's our night out."

Is it a bit Kathy-Lette-Girls-Night-Out with wine and smoking and male strippers? "No," says Lette looking a bit disappointed. "But I did take John Mortimer to a lap-dancing club for his 80th birthday."

Criticism is not water off a duck's back for her. For example, she asks me if I've read her latest book, Dead Sexy. I tell her that, yes, of course I have. Ten minutes later, she says: "You didn't like my book, did you?" I say that I did, but she doesn't believe me.

"Nope," she says, "I can tell you didn't." I then say that maybe the lead female character, Shelly, is a bit too, well, sex-obsessed for me. We leave it at that, but a day later Lette emails me the most amazingly long and wellconstructed defence of Shelly.

"Imagine how dull the world would be if there were only 'nice' women," she writes. "There would be no Anna Karenina. No Emma Bovary. I hope this novel inspires other women to become paragons of vice." She utterly convinced me.

"Everything I've ever felt, all my anger and rage and hate and love and whatever has gone into those books. I always desperately wanted children, but I could never give up writing." But maybe it's all exhausting her? "I've got bags down to my knee caps," she says. "And I worry I've not been witty enough. I haven't, have I?"

Dead Sexy (£14.99 Simon & Schuster) is out next Monday.