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Best-selling author Martina Cole talks Irish roots and punk rock days

By
CAHIR O'DOHERTY,
Irish Voice Newspaper Columnist

Published Thursday, May 28, 2009, 10:32 AM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:11 PM

 

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Martina Cole
Martina Cole

With each new book, author Martina Cole, 51, smashes her own sales records as well as everyone else’s.

Last year her latest book, “Close”, was the biggest selling hardback of the year in Britain, surpassing even publishing juggernauts like J.K. Rowling. (“Close," published by Hachette, goes on sale here in paperback on June 1).

 

But material success hasn’t spoiled Cole a bit, because at heart she’s still an East End girl, the daughter of working class Irish parents on both sides, and all her life she’s kept faith with her ancestry and her past. When she talks you can tell that she means what she says.

“How Irish am I? My mother was from Dublin and my dad from Cork. I knew all the words to ‘Kevin Barry’ when I was three,” Cole tells IrishCentral, followed by raucous laughter.

“Right now my production company is researching the origin of the Irish rebel song. Basically we’re researching everything there is to know about them. It’ll be broadcast here in England next year.”

Growing up with the 'bad boys'

Cole, the youngest of five, was born in the East End of London and moved away to Dagenham during the slum clearances almost 50 years ago.

“Typical Irish, my mother used to say that people make slums, not houses. It’s very true when you think about it,” she says.

“We saw a new bathroom fitting for the first time in our lives, it was like a dream. Everyone we knew then was Irish and most of us talked with Irish accents.”

Growing up, Cole was attracted to the flash lads on the estate who dabbled in crime to make some otherwise elusive cash.

“My father used to hate the lads I was seeing. He called them corner boys, which was the worst thing he could have called you back them. They had nice cars, they had some money and local respect,” recalls.

Where there are a lot of people who don’t have a lot of money, it’s inevitable there will be criminal activity.

“In my books a lot of people start with petty crime and then evolve into big time crime because they haven’t the wherewithal to do anything else. It gets them noticed, too,” she says.

“If a boy’s big and strong and has a reputation I think females are going to be attracted to him because of what he offers. I was and I still am attracted to the bad boys.”

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