A TALE OF TWO KITTIES

DERMOT O’LEARY on working with Simon Cowell – ‘he’s a hoot’ – his Catholic faith and how the stray cats he rescued from Italy inspired his first children’s book

TV presenter Dermot O’Leary on the feline inspiration behind his new children’s book

As well as fronting ITV’s The X Factor for the past ten years (except for a year out in 2015), Dermot was the original presenter of Channel 4’s Big Brother’s Little Brother and has had his own BBC Radio 2 show since 2004. He and his elder sister were born and raised in Colchester, Essex, by their Irish parents Marie and Sean. Now Dermot lives in North London with his wife of five years, TV producer/ director Dee Koppang, 38, who is currently working on Netflix royal family drama The Crown. Also part of the family is their cat Toto, who inspired Dermot’s first foray into children’s books, Toto the Ninja Cat and the Great Snake Escape, along with her brother Silver (who sadly died shortly after our interview). I didn’t set out to write a children’s book. But if you take inspiration from your blind Italian ninja cat, chances are the book is going to be for kids. Four years ago my wife Dee helped deliver Toto and Silver in an incredible piece of cat midwifery. We have a house in Italy and their mother was a stray who lived in a tree in the garden. We flew the two kittens back to London and quickly realised Toto was blind. She kept banging into things but she had incredibly fast reactions. I’m not the greatest author in the world, but I knew I had a good story in my head. You have these romantic notions about being a writer: you’ll rent an isolated cottage in the Cairngorms and write in front of a roaring fire… But it doesn’t actually work out like that. I wrote in my home office or in the dining room on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7am until lunchtime, then did my washing and emails, before reading over what I’d written that day. I’m quite disciplined. I like James Caan’s character’s ritual in the film Misery: when he completes a novel he has a cigarette and a glass of champagne. I don’t smoke but after I finished a draft I’d treat myself to a glass or two. I wrote with my niece, my godchildren and my friends’ kids in mind. And I’m prepared for savage feedback! It’s lovely to see how into books my sister’s daughter [Josette, nine] is. I used to read her stories a lot. I’m not sure quite how many godchildren I’ve got – four or five, I think. I said to my oldest friend the other day, ‘Am I Poppy’s godfather as well as the twins’?’ It’s a very fluid situation. The book is about accepting people who are different. It wasn’t a conscious theme but I’m glad it came out like that. One good thing about this weird, terrifying time we’re living in is the backlash: the idea that love is love, Pride festival, the response to Grenfell. There is definitely more that binds us together. There’s something really heartening about the fact that people here – and my parents found this coming over from Ireland in 1968 – understand that being a Muslim doesn’t make you a terrorist, just like being a Catholic doesn’t make you a terrorist. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a book on my bedside table. My dad would tell me Irish fairy tales and there were lots of books about Irish literature and history around. At 17 I got into James Joyce. Maybe it was the romantic poet in me, but if it was to impress girls it did not work! Ulysses is the only book I’ve never finished – I got lost halfway through. It was the same era I was listening to the Smiths, so I guess it was a phase. I know my name got me through the publisher’s door, but it wasn’t a golden ticket. I still had to put the hours in to write the book! I’m prepared for criticism because

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