Confessions of a Ghostwriter
BY ANDREW CROFTS
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014
Copyright © Andrew Crofts 2014
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Andrew Crofts asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
FIRST EDITION
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007575404
Ebook Edition © SEP 2014 ISBN: 9780007575411
Version: 2014-07-23
To my wife, Susan, who I love with all my heart.
Contents
Introduction
An eight-foot transsexual hooker in the living room
A million books in an African warehouse
Discovering ghostwriting
The story of Stumpy
The glamour model versus the ‘arbiters of taste’
Secrets and confidentiality agreements
Glimpses of hell
That splinter of ice
Suddenly you’re history
Abused children find a voice
Sacked by a glove puppet
A debt to Dale Carnegie
The first questions a ghostwriter should ask
‘You need to come to Haiti …’
Tyrants and other interesting monsters
Lunching with Imelda Marcos
Afternoon tea with Mrs Mubarak
Filthy lucre
Big Brother is watching and listening
A real-life Shades of Grey
A gift for a billionaire
Rich men’s toys
The soporific brothel
An opportunist hack
A book goes global
Revenge can be bitter
The Princess speaks
Confessions of my infidelity
How can anyone write four books a year?
Waking up in the orphanage
Under armed guard in Lahore
The tentative handling of firearms
The faulty memories of rock gods
Soldiers’ tales
Win a ghost of your own
Selling your story to a magazine
Calls from out of the blue
I am an addict
Evangelists of technology
‘Mr Harris would like to quote you …’
A confession of conceit
Guilt and self-doubt
The awesome power of a tear on daytime television
Christina Foyle, queen of all she surveyed
A new breed of stars
The reality of reality television stars
A genuine talent
A real media circus
Culture clashes and other bad marriages
Clubs for gentlemen and players
A Year in Provence unleashes an avalanche
Jim Martin’s island
A Russian in hiding
Education at Madame Jojo’s
From the lips of an Iraqi child
I love supermarket bookshelves
Confessions from the British Library
‘You may just have to get a job …’
The forgotten rules of grammar
A forgotten weekend in academia
A little lone wolf
The greatest living playwright
The selling power of celebrities
The soap star who came to stay
Not everyone can be Hamlet
Discovering Jay Gatsby
‘The Principessa is throwing a party …’
A black BMW behind King’s Cross
Tales of courtesans and mistresses
Deathbed delivery
The mid-book blues
Addiction to charts
Tales from below stairs
A confession of cowardice