Just when the days ahead were looking fairly quiet, with hours spent in front of my laptop sending endless submissions for our new book to agents and publishers, things suddenly heated up…and that’s not just the weather in the UK!
Peter and I were on a two-week break in beautiful Crete when I was contacted by a BBC producer. For the rest of the holiday, I hardly thought about it, so immersed was I in warm sunshine and the gorgeous surroundings. But now that I’m back at home, I’m incredibly excited.
Later this month, I’m off to the BBC studios in London to be interviewed for Lives Less Ordinary radio, podcast and YouTube show. In recent years, I’ve done a dozen BBC local radio interviews, appeared on BBC Breakfast on my book’s launch day almost three years ago, and taken part in more than twenty ‘in conversation with the author’ events at literary festivals, bookshops and libraries, but this feels different.
The interview will last ninety minutes and will be edited into a forty-minute programme, or maybe even two forty-minute shows. Yes, forty minutes of me talking about my book – my grandmother’s tennis career and the family’s escape from the Nazis.
My book turns three next month, but continues to find new readers. In publishing, they call it ‘a long-tail title’: a book that keeps selling steadily over time. Not mass-market numbers, but enough to keep both me and my publisher happy. Every summer, during Wimbledon, it feels almost like the book is launching again.
Although you’ll only see my upper half, I’ll need to find something special to wear for the filming, because YouTube videos are online for years. Will I be sent to the BBC’s hair and makeup department? When I appeared on BBC Breakfast, the hair and make up person covered me in so much gunk that I looked like someone else entirely, and the hairstyle they gave me was pretty strange, too. Luckily, it took just five minutes to rub off half of the make up and ruffle my hair before going on air.
I’ll keep you updated, with pictures of my morning or afternoon at the BBC…as well as a date when you can listen to or watch the show. It’s likely to be on at 12.30pm BST on the first Sunday of Wimbledon – 5th July.
