My secrets for a happy (third) marriage by FAY WELDON

✓ Row like crazy ✓ Never retire ✓ Oh, and it helps if he’s 15 years younger!

sternly. ‘She has very good bone structure, complete Viking and a little bit of Irish.’

There’s something touching about a 73-year- old man worrying about his 87-year- old wife wearing too much lipstick.

Work is busy, even now. Once a week, Fay teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University and she’s just published a wise, witty guide for first-time writers — called Why Will No One Publish My Novel? — giving tips on how to rescue a rejected manuscript.

Weldon didn’t have an easy start as a writer. She had a series of odd jobs, before becoming a top advertising copywriter (coining the phrase: ‘Vodka gets you drunker quicker’), and then moved into TV drama, writing the pilot for Upstairs, Downstairs.

She published her first novel, The Fat Woman’s Joke, in 1967 ‘which was about the struggle between domesticity and dieting’. She wrote on the stairs while the children were small so that she could keep an eye on them.

Back then, male writers were furious with her for writing about women’s topics. ‘Men would walk out of rooms when I walked in because they were so angry and upset that women were no longer willing to iron men’s shirts.

‘But then money crept in and people began to buy women’s books in rather enormous quantities. And they had to respect them because they were doing all right in the market.’

The Life And Loves Of A She Devil, in which wronged wife Ruth steals her husband’s money and has plastic surgery to look like his mistress, was a case in point. When the TV series adaptation came out in 1986, it shaped the cultural conversation for months.

Reading the book now, it’s amazingly prescient about our obsession with cosmetic surgery — though, rather astonishingly, Fay herself isn’t sure if she’s had a facelift. She has been unconscious on an operating table while a cosmetic surgeon worked on her, but she’s not quite sure what he did.

‘I was having an eye lift in Hollywood by the person who did all the famous people. Whether they did anything else, I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t a case of: “I’m going to have a full facelift.” When I came home to London, my then-husband said: “You look very expensive.” So I thought that was quite nice,’ she adds, deadpan.

Others of her novels seem eerily far-sighted, too. Chalcot Crescent (2009) predicts civil unrest after a financial crash (and feels true to our Brexit times). In her sequel, Death Of A She Devil (2017), Ruth has a transgender grandson. And her latest novel, After The Peace, is the tale of a sperm donor baby.

She’s broadly sympathetic to the ‘snowflake’ generation, but worries they don’t believe in love. ‘They don’t have time for it . . . marriage tends to be practical, a

‘I was having an eye lift in Hollywood. Whether they did anything else to me at the same time, I don’t know’

matter of sharing the rent. They see love as neurotic dependency.’

Her own early romantic life was bumpy. She became a single mother at 22 and later married a headteacher 25 years older because he offered to provide for her. The relationship lasted two years.

Her next marriage, to Ron, was passionate, but volatile, and produced three sons.

Today, she insists men were always a mystery. She never felt especially beautiful and even at university was very shy: ‘I’d never talked to a man or had a boyfriend until I was sort of trying to lose my virginity.’ Life without available contraception was terrifying. In the Fifties, nearly all women were married by the age of 23, she adds. The arrival of the Pill changed everything.

‘The question at university was: “Would you remember everyone you ever slept with?” And the answer: “Of course.” But, as time goes on, it seems unlikely. Better not to think about numbers.’

Feminism was a successful revolution, she says. But work hasn’t liberated women. She worries about multi-tasking career women, who, as well as going out to work, have to do all the housework. ‘Really, the only difference is that women have to go out to work whether they like it or not.’

Which is a bit rich, given Fay is a workaholic. ‘She goes a bit funny if she’s not writing something,’ Nick tells me. ‘It’s like an athlete if they’re not training.’

‘I never wanted to write,’ Fay adds. ‘But I think the money is the most important thing. I don’t feel squeamish about money. I was born into the very poor middleclasses, with a single mother. We got scholarships, but I never had any money. Then I had a baby out of wedlock, but one survived.’

For the past 40 years, she has taken HRT (hormone replacement therapy), firmly believing in oestrogen as a source of creativity. ‘These days, I take bioidentical hormones, but I don’t think they’re as good as the “hard” stuff,’ she laughs, girlishly.

‘I had my last baby at 47 and went on writing on oestrogen. I had to bully doctors to get it.’ You can’t delay ageing indefinitely, because you’re going to die, Fay tells me bluntly. She’s had a heart condition since she was young.

‘I’m fairly used to dying because I’d go to hospital and they would stop my heart at least once a month and everyone would gather round for the sideshow, to watch you flatline. Eventually, they came up with a solution — I had a cardiac ablation [to stop the abnormal heart rhythm]. But I rather miss the drama.’

She’s had two near- death experiences (one when she was 17; one ten years ago). ‘I saw the doors of paradise, which were not pearly, but all sorts of vivid colours, like an Indian temple. But I got to see through to the other side of the gates. And I came back saying: “Oh, I see, it’s just the same but different. You pass from one stage to another. It’s the same work and effort . . . but on a different scale.”

Oh, I groan, we’ll still be working? ‘Oh, yes,’ she says, contentedly.

Does she worry about her legacy as a writer? ‘I’ve never had time to think about it,’ she laughs. ‘But I hope I’ve left behind lots of stories that will be useful.’

What worries her is when female fans come up to her and say: ‘Thank you for your novel — it gave me the courage to leave my husband.’ ‘ And they look so unhappy,’ giggles the feminist who’s been married on and off for 60 years.

Why Will No One Publish My Novel? (£8.99, head Of Zeus).