Lucy Brazier is the former Deputy head porter of a Cambridge College. Whilst at work, she kept a blog of her experiences which we talked about last year. Since leaving “Old College” she has taken her writing from blogs to books. Her debut book “Secret diary of a porter girl” is out now.
“For legal reasons, I had to murder members of the fellowship.”
What happened after College life?
A few people were really gutted that I was leaving. I absolutely loved the college. That’s why I wrote about it. So I thought, I’m going to take a year out of my career and give the writing a go. The blog changed from a diary because some of the characters were bloody close to some of the people there. And that wasn’t fair. The characters that were really close, I thought, well I’ll just kill them off. By this point it was completely fictional so I could invent more characters. I felt bad about electrocuting the senior bursar, but it had to happen. The man had to go. For legal reasons, I had to murder members of the fellowship.
The one character that I couldn’t get rid of was the Dean. I thought it is worth upsetting the real dean, who in college is one of the more down to earth people in real life, so I thought he would be ok.
Who is your favourite character of the new crop?
Probably the new bursar. He’s a really sinister character, with an interesting background. I love it. I wanted him to be a highly intelligent character.His dialogue was really hard. He’s a really popular character on the blog but he freaks people out a bit.
Where did the inspiration for him come from.
You know it came from Alan Rickman. The way he talks, a sort of foreign Alan Rickman. I’ve always had a fascination with Russian spies you know.It’s almost like that. I find Putin, to be this kind of mesmerizing thing. I want to be his mistress so that I can write a book about it and be killed by the KGB.
This childish humour that you have. Do you enjoy the chance to be juvenile on your blog?
I mean that is who I am. I could joke about Latin grammar, and I find it clever but It doesn’t make me laugh. I think that cheeky juvenile humour is universal. And to put it in such a formal setting works really well, like college.
Do you miss the students
I really miss the students. I still worry about some of them. I hope they did sort it out and that they got their degrees. I think about them a lot. And I still talk about them and few of them I still see so I don’t miss them. There always round my house drinking my beer.
What’s the feedback been like?
It’s really encouraging. One guy emailed me saying that he’d really enjoyed it, and that he was half-way through. I thought to myself “halfway through? you might have got in there a bit early there!” And then I realised that that message had come through on my own email so I was like “Woah! maybe I should use a pseudonym.”
And sequels?
They are sort of written. They need editing of course but the next two are ready. The second one is getting there. It’s good because the blog is a brilliant way of getting feedback. I know what works and what doesn’t like which characters aren’t so good so they can die in another book. Some are made literally to be killed. Kind of like Sean Bean in every film he’s ever been in, really.
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