Katy Wix's 'Delicacy: A Memoir About Cake and Death'

Virgin Radio

24 Apr 2021, 11:13

Author and comedian Katy Wix joined the Graham Norton Radio Show with Waitrose to chat about turning to writing in her bittersweet memoir.

Well-known for her comedic roles in The Windsors and Not Going Out, Katy Wix has some more serious things to say in 'Delicacy: A Memoir About Cake and Death', in which she sits down to talk about loss and grieving experiences she's had to deal with throughout her life. But in the way of the Katy Wix we all know and love, and as the book's title may suggest, she keeps things lighthearted.

"Even though it's covering some heavy subjects, there's a lot of humour there, but also I think that when you write about these things it's sort of good to have done some of the healing and come to it having dealt with it"

"Otherwise I think it is too sort of raw, and maybe difficult to read so I felt really responsible to the reader that I didn't want it to just be a litany of very tragic things"

Bonding with Graham over the shared experience of writing a memoir, she discussed what it's like opening up to the public sphere: "It feels almost like a bonding thing, it's strange."

"Someone will come up to me and talk to me like they know me but it's actually quite nice in some ways. Yeah it is strange, but I had a really clear sense of what I was going to include and what I wasn't"

"I think if you feel like 'Oh I'll just say anything, me, for any amount of money' then that's not good either" she laughs.

It sounds like the memoir, or the thought of, was in the works for a while. "I've always loved writing and I think I almost just didn't take it seriously enough, I kind of dabbled with more serious things, some more kind of poetic things and prose. I'm used to writing scripts but I think it just took getting a bit older and maybe the confidence to really sit down and properly try to improve my writing" she says.

"In some ways it was quite comforting, almost like keeping a diary. It was nice to just sort of have a place that I could go back and write about it and sort of work things out on the paper a bit, so it was quite therapeutic"

And for the answer you're really waiting for - why the cake?

 "Well it was quite a happy accident!"

"I wrote a short story which involved cake and then I sort of decided that it would be good to have something as a bit of scaffolding throughout the book and a kind of theme to return to, because otherwise it would just be a series of stories I guess about my life so I knew I wanted something to kind of unify it"

"Either what would happen is, suddenly I'd start writing about something and half-way through it a cake would sort of appear in the story at a really important point and that kept happening. I kept thinking 'Oh there's something about this... it keeps appearing' so it happened by accident really, but I think it sort of works somehow"

Dedicating the book to her best friend who sadly passed away, Katy reflects on the final days and weeks before her experiences were put into print:

"I got scared the week before and sort of said 'Oh no I'll take that bit out actually' and I sort of went back and forth saying 'Am I brave enough to say that?' but I think when I read other people's writing which is very vulnerable I find it very inspiring". "It just makes me feel better about what I've been through, it gives me a greater understanding so I think if the more honest bits are useful to someone, then that's a really great feeling"

Katy Wix's 'Delicacy: A Memoir About Cake And Death' is out in paperback now