‘Hello, is that Lucy-Anne Holmes? This is Channel 4 News. We were wondering if you’d be available to come in for a discussion on Chicklit.’

Oh. Holy. Wee. I must have misheard. I played it again. And again. And again. And then I said, ‘Noooooooooahhhhhhhh ohmygodbuggerybollocks,’ which didn’t bode well for a live broadcast newsfeed.

So I called the nice girl, and she did indeed want me (well, probably me after the 346 other chicklit writers she’d tried before me) I was shaking on the phone. I panted ‘Will someone be able to do my make up?’ quite early on in the conversation. But I managed not to say ‘Are you lot INSANE?! Drivvle! Drivvle that’s what comes out of my mouth, and that’s coming from people who love me!’ so I think it went quite well considering.

It turns out that she’d read my interview on Chciklitreviews and she wanted me to debate Chicklit with Polly Courtney who recently left her publishers, Harper Collins, because she felt her book had been unfairly marketed as Chicklit. The lovely girl from Channel 4 News said she would call back later.

And so I sat and panicked and I thought about clothes. And then for ages and ages I worked out what I would say. And I became impassioned. Why? Because I love Chicklit. I love writing it, I love reading it and I love the people who write it, read it, make it happen and support it. And yet I don’t think I’ve ever really stood up for it. Until now. Beware people. I’m flinging off my shoes and clambouring ungainly onto that soap box, best not look, I’m wearing a short skirt. No, I’ve never really stood up for this thing I love, this thing that gives me so much joy. And that makes me sad.

Sorry to beat right into the middle of the bloody bush, but a lot of so-called cultured and creative people think that chicklit is trash. I was once at dinner with a lady, who scoffed in disgust that someone had been reading a book with an embossed cover, an ex partner of mine once described a book I was reading as ‘crap’. As a result of this and countless other incidents, when such people ask me what I do, I tend to say ‘I write romantic comedy’ or even and I’m not proud of this ‘I write frivolous fiction’. But in doing that I’m letting the snobs win. And if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s snobbishness. Because snobbishness is cold, it’s mean, it looks down it’s nose. It thinks it’s better. And chicklit is the opposite of that. It’s warm, it’s kind hearted, it inspires, it’s expansive, it is self deprecating but it loves itself too. Chicklit is all the good stuff. And when I see an embossed cover with a stick figure drawing in a pastel shades with squiggly writing, I know that’s what I’m getting; that feeling of warmth you get when you put on your favourite cardy, that snotty uplifted tearfulness you experience at the end of a Richard Curtis film, a plot that will whisk me away for an afternoon, because let’s not forget, these books are hard to put down and as any writer will tell you, that takes a large amount of brain ache to achieve.

We should be so proud of this genre. It’s been uniquely created and nurtured in the UK and Ireland. It’s ours. The ‘Here Come The Girls,’ song form the M and S ad is playing in my head now, because chicklit is all about the women. There’s still so much pressure on us to look good and have it all and yet still be nurturing and feminine, and all the other gubbins. We’re still not paid as much as men, we’re governed almost exclusively by the buggers, and to make matters really infuriating we still melt when a handsome one says something cheeky. How lucky are we to have a genre that allows us to explore all this in a fun and accessible way? How lucky are we to live in a society that enables us to do that?

Anyway the lady from Channel 4 called back 3 hours later and said that they wouldn’t need me and I felt disappointed that I didn’t get my moment to express how much I love this genre. However at least now, when the next person asks me what I do, I’m going to smile and say slowly, and proudly, with a twinkle in my eye ‘I write Chicklit’ and I’m going to say it with such relish and delight that this person is going to think ‘I want a bit of what she’s having.’