MY TV LIFE Val Mcdermid
Kirkcaldy-born Val, 66, is a bestselling crime fiction author most famous for a series of novels featuring profiler Tony Hill and detective Carol Jordan
What was your first TV memory?
A BBC adaptation of David Copperfield when I was five or six. I remember crouching behind my dad’s chair, and peeking around it as David Copperfield was being beaten by his stepfather. I can remember being horrified, I suppose because I had a relatively straightforward childhood and nobody had beaten me.
Who was your first TV crush?
Probably Servalan in Blake’s 7. There was a lot to love about Servalan, she had that ice cold beauty and power.
What was your first TV appearance?
When I was 14 I was in my school’s team for the Top Of The Form TV quiz. We won the first match and lost the second one.
What is your favourite current show?
Probably Call My Agent, I just adore that, and a friend is one of the writers on the British adaptation so I’m really looking forward to seeing that when it arrives on our screens. I love it because it’s clever, witty and funny, and it doesn’t take itself
seriously.
Which TV show would you take to a desert island?
I’d want something with lots of episodes, so it’d probably be The West Wing or Homicide: Life On The Street. Everybody talks about The Wire as writer David Simon’s great show but I love Homicide... which was its precursor.
Which TV show would you like to put out of its misery?
Where to begin? Pretty much any of Love Island, The Only Way Is Essex, that kind of nonsense celebrating people being famous for nothing but being famous.
Guiltiest TV pleasure?
The Great British Sewing Bee. I enjoy watching people doing something they love really well – you have to admire that. I just love the presenters. It’s a kind show, it’s nice and it’s funny.
What are you up to at the moment?
I’m doing a lot of events, podcasts and interviews about my latest book, 1979. And I’m researching the second in the series, which will be 1989. So I am listening to lots of 80s music and reading about the fall of Communism, the wars between Maxwell and Murdoch, and the aftermath of Hillsborough and Lockerbie.
1979 by Val Mcdermid (Little Brown, £20) is out on Thursday