The DJ and writer on coming to terms with being a novelist, the appeal of middle-aged men and the book that broke her heart
Radio 2 DJ Sara Cox has come a long way since the 1990s when Channel 4’s The Girlie Show made her one of the original ladettes. In 2019, her memoir Till the Cows Come Home: A Lancashire Childhood became a critical and commercial success; now comes a debut novel, Thrown. Tapping knowledge gleaned while presenting The Great Pottery Throw Down and grappling with themes from loneliness to infertility, it’s a funny, touching story of four very different women who meet at a ceramics class on a housing estate near Manchester.
Have you described yourself as a novelist yet?
No! I’ve not got used to talking about it. It’s just you and the book locked away for so long that when it’s out there it’s exciting but quite scary as well.