This interview appeared in the ‘Bestsellers Talking’ segment of The Freelance Writer’s Handbook (1986) by Paul Kerton.
Tom Sharpe is Britain’s most popular funny writer. His novels are zany tales full of the most eccentric characters, with potent social comment underlying their ludicrous plots. His first, Riotous Assembly, spoofed the South African police state; Wilt told the catastrophic story of a disillusioned polytechnic teacher; and The Throwback chronicled a young man’s quest to get even with his father and the world at large. Sharpe’s twelve novels have sold four million copies between them.
In his mid-fifties, Tom Sharpe looks younger; and more like a minister (which his father was) than a bestseller.
“I don’t look like the person who writes my books. I wanted to be one of those deadly serious writers, like Thomas Mann, or Graham Greene. But it didn’t work out. You always get what you deserve. I guess I’m a comedian. You learn what you are and to stay with what you are.
“The original strategy that I had was to write six books. I didn’t think I’d make any money for six books, until I’d got the back list going. In fact Wilt was my sixth book. Not only are you introducing new books but you have to have the back-up. If people like one of your books they immediately start to look around for another one.
“I write farce. I write rubbish, but I mean that with a sense of irony and an awful lot of hard work goes into that rubbish. To be a bit serious, they are attacking apartheid and I hate apartheid and racism, and sexism. I hope that loathing comes across in my books.
“Half the things in my books are true to life. I maintain that I am writing a form of realism in that real life is as dotty as my books are. I was writing for years before I developed this style. And then I wasn’t a journalist, I was a photographer. I took babies and weddings and things.
“I’d been out of South Africa for nine years when I wrote Riotous Assembly. I was deported because of a play I wrote about the place, and then I worked in a Technical College teaching for nine years. The book started out as a short story and I just kept on writing. I wrote 110,000 words in three weeks and that’s bashing the stuff out.
“I remember getting to bits and thinking, what the hell happens next?, but out it came. I wrote Wilt in a fortnight but most of the other ones—Porterhouse Blue, Indecent Exposure, and Blott On The Landscape—were hewn out of solid rock. I don’t think there is a writer like me anywhere and that’s without conceit, you understand.
“I like to work in the garden shed. It’s got a heater and a plasterboard lining, and I feel the need to go out to work in a morning. I usually only write in the mornings. I have 14 typewriters and two word processors (in the study) and write as much as I can depending on my mood.
“My wife reads my manuscripts page by page to give me moral support. If I get stuck we talk it over and if she says it stinks I throw it out the window. If my missus doesn’t like it, it’s got to be lousy.
“The funny thing about reviewers is that they never know what the hell to say. They are always comparing me with people who are completely wrong. A comparison with Wodehouse is ludicrous. They either hate me or they love me and I think that’s the public reaction too. But if any writer tells you they never read the critics, then you can bet the bastard is lying. Some of my reviews have been harsh; my god, I’ve had sledgehammer ones. When I say people don’t like me, I mean it.
“When I wrote Ancestral Vices, Peter Ackroyd of the Sunday Times got right under my skin. He went for me in a nasty, vicious way. It’s the only time I have ever replied to a critic. He accused me of being a pornographer.
“I don’t ask people to like my books, just to read them and judge them on their own merit. One guy gave The Throwback about five columns of well-reasoned argument about how he hated it. He ended by saying, ‘There may be a worse book published this year, but I doubt it.’ I didn’t mind that at all because he’d read the book and argued his case well. That’s fair enough. If you are at all sensitive or squeamish then you shouldn’t read the damn things.
“I read all sorts of writers. I like detective stories—I’m always saying I don’t but I do. It’s dangerous because if a writer’s got a particular style it can affect my own. That’s why I read neutral stuff. I don’t think you need too much input to write what I write, if you’ve got that sort of imagination to start with. When people ask me what I write, I say I don’t know what I write, I just write.”