Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
extent that our spare room was renamed the Hodgson Suite - and we've kept in touch
since she left Little, Brown.
Michelle is another of these approximately-eleven-years-younger pals, about the
same age as Gary and Roger. The girl takes her novel research seriously. She lived on
Guadeloupe in the Caribbean for almost half a year to research a novel set there, and
moved out for three months to Benin, next door to Nigeria, a couple of years ago, to work
on another book. In both places the national language is French, which Michelle is fluent
in, and part of the idea was to go somewhere hot and exotic, certainly (research should
be fun, as I've always thought and am trying to prove), but more importantly somewhere
hot and exotic off the more usually trodden tracks for English speakers. Ann and I duly
went out to Guadeloupe for a week when she was there - just to make sure she was okay,
obviously - but missed out on Benin.
Maybe just as well. While Michelle was there she contracted malaria. She got through
it, and it was one of the not-quite-so-serious, non-recurring types, but it sounded unpleas-
ant enough from the symptoms she described. One of the main reasons she got through
the illness was a young Nigerian man called Tom Obasi, who looked after her while the
disease was at its worse. They were married a few months later.
Why Roger and I have mixed feelings about Brad
.
Bradley Adams is a great tall chunky man of quietly riotous good humour and a passion
for films and for making films that can even get through my near-invincible filmic dis-
illusion. He was the producer of
The Crow Road
, and, if the money is ever got together,
will produce the films of my books that Roger has been working on the scripts of. He has
an enormous reservoir of Really Funny Film Stories (many of them libellous), is great
company and, in a modest, unassuming way, is profoundly impressive.
Roger, Brad and I were sitting in the secret underground HQ of Brad's production
company in Soho (well, I usually get lost when I'm trying to find it and it is in the base-
ment). We were in what I think is supposed to be the script development room but which
always feels to me like the staff room or the common room or the officers' mess or
something, sitting round the table drinking wine and chatting. Roger and I were about to
leave to meet Michelle for the first time since she'd got back from Africa, before rendez-
vousing with Brad again later so I could do research for my novel
Dead Air
(this con-
sisted of going to a huge early Christmas party being thrown by Working Title Films at
the RAC Club on Piccadilly, then going on to the Groucho Club and the Soho House and
then the Century Club where I had a great time but then completely forgot all about until
we had the topic's launch party there, coincidentally, most of a year later. After that we
went back to Claridge's and sat talking nonsense, mostly, all night).
