I was quite an immature teenager, not worldly wise, even though I grew up London in the swinging Sixties. I wasn’t an angsty teenager, I was intelligent and quite competitive, the kind of person who always came top in English. I went to an all-girls school so I didn’t have a boyfriend though I’d sometimes go to parties and try to wriggle out of the clutches of boys who just wanted a quick snog. I did have a huge crush on Mick Jagger. I preferred The Beatles’ music, but Mick Jagger was sexier. I kept a teenage diary and there’s lots about him in it. My friend and I would find clever ploys to try to get to meet him. I remember once we hung outside the Stones’ concert and I tried to convince the security guard I’d met Mick Jagger at a party in Hampstead and I’d lent an LP from him. I persuaded them to take a note to his dressing room and they came back and said, he does remember you but he’s just about to go on stage so he can’t chat now. I was a very naive girl.
I was quite close to both my parents and even more to my sister. There was also my aunt and uncle and my grandmother – we lived in the same house but on different floors. We would meet up with granny for Sunday lunch and play Monopoly with my aunt and uncle. My father had polio, he was in a wheelchair. And so it was nice, looking back, that we had other adults around who could get involved in a more physical kind of activity. My parents were very, very good parents. They weren’t at all meddling, interfering or pushy. Mostly they just let my sister and me get on with it. We’d go walking through Hampstead Heath, and across the city – we were quite lively, and had a kind of freedom parents these days might not allow.
I didn’t want to be a writer at first, I wanted to be an actress. I was very stagestruck because when I was a bit younger I’d understudied the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Old Vic in a star-studded production. So I could spout iambic pentameters, which must where my flair for metre and rhythm comes from. That was my ambition, to go to drama school. I wasn’t very glamorous but I was interested in clothes, I wasn’t frumpy. I was quite inspired by the actresses in that production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Judi Dench and Barbara Leigh-Hunt.
I gave up my acting ambitions quite gradually. I didn’t get into drama school so I applied to university instead. After I graduated I was very much with Malcolm [her husband, a doctor who became her regular musical partner] and I didn’t want to go travelling round the country trying to get into rep companies. So I did kind of abandon my acting ambitions. But all of that spirit got channelled into performing because when I met Malcolm we went busking together a lot, and then we started performing in folk clubs and festivals. It’s very satisfying because performance has largely come back into my life again. Although I’m regarded primarily as a writer, I probably spend more of my time devising shows based on the books. And although I’m not acting Lady Macbeth or anything like that, I am actually on the stage playing to thousands of people. I think my teenage self would be quite impressed with that.
What would surprise the younger me most would probably be that I ended up being best known for writing children’s books. I’d probably be disappointed with that because I’d rather have become Helen Mirren. My sister and I would take the neighbouring little children to the zoo sometimes, and when I was in my 20s I ran a drama workshop for five- to eight-year-olds so I’ve had quite a bit of experience with children. But I knew I didn’t want to rush into having my own. I wanted to enjoy my freedom. My sister had children very young and I could see how much they changed your life. I wrote a lot of songs for adults when we sang in the clubs but there was more of a market for the children’s songs, that’s what I could make money from, so that’s how it all evolved.
Malcolm and I met through his university roommate and went busking together. When my girlfriend and I were in Paris studying he came over and we went busking there too. So we were absolute bosom buddies. But it wasn’t till I was back in Bristol when it developed into a real romance. Which was lovely. I think I would tell my teenage self, don’t go running after Mick Jagger, it’s actually much more satisfying and exciting to have a romance with someone you already know. You don’t have to pretend you’re something you’re not. He’s always been a part of my shows and he comes on all the foreign tours. We’ve played all around the world, Australia, Bermuda, China, India, Korea, Singapore, South Africa.
