had been one such jingle. She had a new audience, and audience is the word, for Kate realised, more or less overnight, that one of the ways to avoid being a butt or laughingstock yourself is to make people laugh—not as in the pious old cliché “with you rather than at you”; no, they had to laugh at you, but they had to laugh because you made them, because you were funny. Her desire to be inconspicuous, one of the crowd, faded as though it had never been, as she realised that it was fine to be the centre of attention on one’s own terms, and that there was nothing, literally nothing, that couldn’t be turned into a joke. In fact, the more horrible and discreditable the subject matter, the better the joke. (This, of course, is her technique to this day.) She got in there quick, aged eleven, when everyone else was still nervously looking for new alliances, a new place in the pecking order; and she made them laugh. Astute, she was then.

She blossomed in the unfamiliar sunshine of success, and within two years became a new person, her appearance changing with startling rapidity. The eczema and bronchitis disappeared as though they had never been, her skinny body filled out, her skin began to glow, her hair to shine. The fact that many of her contemporaries made a reverse journey—from clean, odourless girlhood to spotty, greasy, sweaty adolescence—gave Kate yet more of an advantage. She was ahead; they looked to her for advice. Womanhood came early to her, and suited her, to her own surprise: was it nature or will power that effected the transformation? She was not sure, and still is not. Either way, it was a new lease of life, and she felt that she could bounce out of the confines of her own past like a rubber ball full of spring. Was she angry, in those days, to be a woman? Not at all, she was delighted—of that at least she is still certain.

It was a sudden leap, from timid, persecuted outcast to queen of the playground, and probably more sudden in her subsequent recitals than in reality. But the metamorphosis was real enough, and she enjoyed every moment of it. She became, she says, merciless in her pursuit of power. She instigated a playground game called Confessions (her profitable flair for journalism was evident this early) which consisted of forcing everyone present to recount the most embarrassing experience of the last twenty-four hours. The girls loved it, and the game became immensely popular, though Kate usually won, simply by being more truthful than everyone else. Also, she had good material to go on—her Mum, her Dad, Peter, Grandpa Fletcher at Abbey Wood, Arblay Street, the secrets of her body, what old Mr. Bly had tried to do to her when she went to pick up the groceries, Auntie Janey’s spaniel, the sewage works, out they all came, translated into art. It was like a kind of magic, turning shit into gold, or so she now tells us. She made them laugh, the hard-baked kids with their wedge shoes and pierced ears, their waspy waists and painted toenails, the timid girls with their home-knit cardigans and schoolgirl sandals. She said things they’d never dare, she made them turn pale. She did things they’d never dare, just to see what it was like. All for a laugh. Oh, I had a nerve, in those days, Kate sighs, looking back. (Kate’s jokes about her father were a fine mixture of defence and aggression; at Junior School, when others mocked, she had always taken his part, fiercely partisan, tooth and nail, but as she grew older she discovered she could avert ridicule by taking the initiative herself, an exercise which simultaneously disturbed and satisfied her: by betraying she protected.)