@thetimes has dropped its paywall for the weekend, so I’ve popped links to some of my stories from the past year in Stories - on my life before and after ADHD diagnosis, unexplained infertility, IVF, tall women and fashion, hip dysplasia and lots more!
Thank you as ever to the amazing teams at @thetimesmagazine and Times Weekend for having me, especially @lesleyjthomas and @cocker_hoop , and @timestravel and @theststyle - beyond exciting to be there this year with It’s Not a Bloody Trend and No One Talks About This Stuff - and to Rosie and @shellwoodblake for being a dream travel team.
Here’s something very silly about #ItsNotABloodyTrend and whether or not men will get something from it. If you’re a bloke and have enjoyed it, I’d be very grateful if you could chuck a comment below or where you bought it from!
I’ve been very lucky with the coverage I’ve had around the book, but because much of it is my personal experience, I can see why people might think it’s pure memoir and perhaps only a book pertaining to ladies (specifically: enormously tall redheads who speak like they’ve fallen out of Downton Abbey.) Instead, each chapter is a third memoir, a third interviews with ADHD adults (male, female, from as many backgrounds and experiences as would chat to me) and male and female psychiatrists, researchers and experts in the field. The resources section has information for as many intersections of identity as I could find at the time - and hopefully, will expand to even more!
There’s a brilliant saying in recovery: “Listen to the similarities and not the differences in the sharing that follows.” The feedback I am very kindly getting from the book seems to be that it is helpful, informative and funny, whoever you are and whatever your experience - and if you’re thinking of picking it up from the bookshop, ordering it from the library, or online, I really hope you enjoy it. And yes, I did have a solid period of time where my phone bills were inexplicably linked to Kevin.
(PS Leading Man is not a Kevin text, and very much a “Kat is reading this now and hugely enjoying it” one.)
#adhdbooks #adhdwomen #adhdadults #adhdadult #adhdmen #adhdsupport #adhdbooks #newbook #bookstagram #amreading #booksforlife #newnonfiction
Happy Rivals Day! Look, if you don’t go ALL OUT then you’re basically just in, right?
Amazing nail art (complete with polo mallets, the Rivals R, clapperboards, iconic red heel and TV tape) done before recording the Rivals podcast (out today on Disney+ and all the usual places!) by the incredibly longsuffering #selfish_vicky at @selfish_london who also previously interpreted my book cover for It’s Not a Bloody Trend and the cover of Brambly Hedge’s Autumn Story because she is a wizard and also unfortunately subject to my nail-based whims because she is so bloody clever.
Swipe for those and then for good measure the AMAZING joyous as otters Riders front cover rendered by @aimeesbakes for my birthday with the Jilly Book Club in 2017 (not a big birthday, I just wanted a special cake!) and then the one my friends commissioned from her for my book launch in 2024.
If you’d told me I’d be able to write about Jilly Cooper’s books, let alone watch a hilarious, loved and deeply perfect TV show adaptation of my favourite, I’d have laughed hopefully but thought you were talking nonsense. How wonderful to be proved totally wrong! I genuinely thought I’d have to one day give up and learn what a bear market was! Delighted just to keep thinking it’s a trading place for cheerfully hirsute gentlemen!
And, God - it’s lovely to celebrate Jilly and all the wonderful work she’s made and inspired - and so so so many happy laughing people xxx
Bloody lovely to see @sarabenwell@rosie.clarke and @isobelbooks repping the JCBC on The One Show!
I hugely recommend establishing a book club dedicated to your favourite author. Not only will you meet other women (and men) with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their work, but you’ll have the best adventures: Only Connect, perfumes of Jilly, the food, hardcore Jilly quizzes, intense scrutiny of the men to rate them accordingly (Bas just pipped Rupert to the top), Christmas parties, taffeta dresses, dogs, lunches in Bisley, and endless, joyous, howling laughter.
One day to go till the next series of Rivals starts on Disney+ (and of course you’ve read the books, yes? If not, kick off with Rivals, then Polo, and go from there. What an enormous treat!)
#jillybookclub #jcbc #jillycooperbookclub #jillycooper
Some lovely moments from the Rivals s2 premiere (we watched the first two episodes and it is JOY!)
- Jilly writ large across the IMAX!
- Corinium Cares
- Bar Sinister in Waterloo with @bombaysapphireuk
- The deadpan Olympics with Katherine Parkinson, @officialdannydyer and @alexanderhassell
- “He’s just misunderstood!” David Tennant stands up for Tony very Baddingham
- Felicity Blunt’s beautiful tribute to Jilly
- @dominictc and David Tennant smashing one of Tony’s best lines
- Actual @thetonyhadley ?! (This was doubly amazing as I spent 2023 riding @miss_cakehead ’s horse, Tony Hadley. Both fine men.)
- The cast dancing along to True
- Mum and Dad having a lovely time out. H didn’t see season one as I’d watched it beforehand so he is now entranced and trying to watch season one before Friday (when the episodes launch AND the official podcast cough cough which I hear is great!)
I’m also doing a LOVELY Jilly Cooper panel on Saturday 7.30pm at @bathlitfest with @thedaisybee and @missminifer so if you’re a Jilly fan and you’re in Bath, I hope to see you there! Yes, I will probably still be wearing my sweatshirt. Not bad for something 10 years old!
I’ve been to @thedreamingretreat on four retreats now (I’ve paid for all of them) and my God, this is the most beautiful and magical place in the most ridiculously lovely surroundings. I’m afraid I left my phone in the car to have some time off the internet (there’s minimal reception here anyway - I read two Lee Child novels and Charlotte Sometimes) so enjoy these pics from Sunday when I briefly got it out of the car to figure out which charging stations to stop off at on the way back to London.
Dying to go back and do the Witch retreat, but to be honest I could just spend days at this lovely place doing nothing but mooning at flowers, the woods, the waterfall, and Pushkin the barn cat.
#thedreaming #retreat #rhydoldoghouse #rhayader #elanvalley
🇺🇸US publication day! It’s Not a Bloody Trend is now available to order from bookshops and libraries! 🇺🇸
I am so thrilled, even if I am a day late, but to be fair, it’s a book about ADHD so this is very on brand.
Please tell your pals and American chums - this book has so many brilliant and helpful and deeply funny people in it sharing their stories and what works for them. I hope it helps you too! Swipe for some of what other readers have said, and then a picture of my dog, Sybil, and the amazing cake my friends had made for me IN THE FORM OF THE BOOK COVER!
Lots of love and I really hope you enjoy it. And remember: keep an eye out for social stigma targeting groups - and It’s Not a Bloody Trend!
#adhdbooks #adhd
Ad/pr (comped lunch) - I would once have thought it borderline impossible to laugh this hard without a glass of booze - this is a Gooseberry Spritz and is 100% non-alc - but you can’t hang out with @rachellovesal and not howl.
This was about how stereotypically badly some chaps take photographs, if I remember correctly, while we had the loveliest lunch outside on @fondarestaurant ’s terrace, bathed in the Aperol Spritz light of its awnings. Only friends should take pics, I think, although I’m sorry we were running back from a missed train when I tried to capture the glory of Rachel’s splendid new coat! (Swipe for that)
Huge thank you to @rosieakenhead for the lovely invitation - we had beautiful ceviche (the tomato is especially good), crostata and tacos (the crab, and steak with a mouthful of baked manchego on top were so good - cheese crisps arguably the premier snack to make at home when you can be arsed) and then slow cooked rib of beef with an adorable little hot pocket of tortillas for us to make up, with pickled carrot on the side, and THEN a stiff coffee, with perfect churros and chocolate sorbet with a little pool of chilli. Magic.
Then I went to Barbour and tried on the most extraordinary hat from their new Farm Rio collab - swipe to see this - I felt very Reverend Mother in it but also…I really love it?!
When I posted about Fonda on stories, I was inundated with people either thinking wistfully about it but now living up north, or simply that it is the best Mexican they’ve ever had. It’s on Heddon Street, just off Regent Street, so go and find it for yourself the next time you’re looking for a treat. And please send me an Aperol Spritz terrace photo, unless it’s the yeti hanging over the stairs. Ditto if you end up buying the Reverend Mother hat.
(lunch gifted with no obligation to post but it was totally delicious and the staff, who we tipped properly, were splendid and dealt very well with the lunchtime rush)
#fonda #fondarestaurant #ladieswholunch
She’s an @the.independent cover girl! On why everyone who runs the London Marathon is BLOODY AMAZING and hideous memories of games at school can’t get in the way that they’re all doing incredible, inspiring and deeply emotional things. As ever, shout out to @bryonygordon for being amazing and running multiple marathons in her underwear and @alexandra.heminsley whose wonderful book Running Like A Girl totally changed my perspective on exercise.
Swipe for new writing, plus my new Substack piece resharing my marathon blog from when I insanely ran it in 2014, plus some extremely sweaty berk-Kat photos showing that, my God, running 26.2 miles and all the training IS WORK!
If you’ve been out supporting runners today I hope you’ve enjoyed arguably the most inspiring day in London, and give your friends and family (anyone at all, really!) the biggest hug for being such total stars.
(Hail Holy Queen from the original Sister Act film was my power song for all my training. It is the ultimate pick me up and it is surely a crime that Instagram doesn’t have it!)
#londonmarathon #runninglikeagirl
Rivals: The Official Podcast is back!
@pandorasykes , the cast, the creators, and a host of fans including your truly dissect every episode when the series returns to @disneyplusuk on May 13.
Here’s a snippet from the first series, which you can watch on Disney+ or listen to wherever you like to get your podcasts.
Pitching this podcast to Disney is one of the best things I have ever done and as a longtime Jilly fan - from the Jilly book club to captaining The Jillies on Only Connect, and writing about her work - I am so thrilled to be able to be a part of the voices fangirling about it all.
Onwards! To Jillyworld, Rutshire and joy!
