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26
Jul
Interview with Steph McGovern: 'Harrogate has a special place in my heart'
Steph McGovern only lived in Harrogate for three years, but they were among the most momentous of even her action-packed life.
The TV presenter moved to a house close to the town’s Odeon just before lockdown. Her daughter was born shortly afterwards at Harrogate District Hospital and she started writing her first novel.
The novel — Deadline — was published this month, days before the start of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. McGovern has attended the festival regularly for a decade as a fan and host, but this was her first appeareance as an author.
During a break in the four-day festival she told the Stray Ferret echoes of those strange pandemic years are never far away when she returns to Harrogate: “I can’t pass the Asda without thinking about queuing there during covid and vaccinations in the car park."
She and her partner chose Harrogate because it was a handy location for filming Steph’s Packed Lunch.
She says:
I knew Channel 4 wanted me to do a show in Leeds and Harrogate has a really special place in my heart because of the festival and also because I grew up in Middlesbrough and we used to come here for day trips.
It’s got that brilliant history with the spas and also it’s just really pretty. It doesn’t look like a homogenous high street; it’s a vibrant place, the architecture is great and it’s a welcoming place.
Steph McGovern (right) and Val McDermid at this year's festival. Pic: Gerard Binks
Favourite haunts
The couple stayed for about three years before moving back to McGovern's native north-east. She says: “We left due to childcare. And I’d got a house by the sea and after lockdown we just wanted a change.”
She returns to North Yorkshire regularly: “I’ve got tons of friends here and still go to Rudding Park quite a bit. I think it’s the best spa in the country. Even when I had moved to Newcastle and was still doing my show in Leeds, I would stay at Rudding.”
Harrogate, she says, is the perfect place to host the crime writing festival, which is staged by the arts charity Harrogate International Festivals and sold almost 20,000 tickets this year.
"Obviously it’s where Agatha Christie came — we are never allowed to forget that — but it’s a great set-up and the local economy does well from it. There are lots of people buying food as well as books.”
She likes to visit Bettys Tea Room when she returns. “I know that sounds so cliched, but I do love going there. I love their kedgeree.”
Does she get recognised? “Yes, but here it feels different because if you live in Harrogate you probably know I lived here so therefore you are used to me and in the crime world most people know me from events so it’s not like fame, it’s more like just like greeting a neighbour.”
Speaking at last week's festival. Pic: Gerard Binks
Festival fever
McGovern's crime writing friend Ann Cleeves first invited her to the festival in 2015 to interview screenwriter Paul Abbot, who wrote the comedy drama Shameless. She recalls:
I absolutely loved it. I have always read loads of crime fiction, and it was great to be among all the authors. I realised it was so accessible. It’s not like typical showbiz events where people are kept away from the fans. I loved that interaction and hearing the authors talk.
Attending previous festivals inspired her to have a go at writing: “I had just had my baby, we were living in Harrogate and I was doing a TV show from my house because I couldn’t do it from the studios. Writing was kind of my sanity — I could go off into this fictional world with these characters. That’s what I was doing when everyone else was making banana bread.”
Deadline begins with a journalist conducting a live TV interview with the chancellor. Her earpiece is hijacked by someone who says they have kidnapped her family, and a pacey thriller evolves.
McGovern says she has never been more intimidated by anything than writing the book.
I know I am a storyteller. I know that I can do that on the telly or radio, but I never thought I had the ability to write. I was intimidated by how good everyone is with language, vocabulary, punctuation and grammar and I was thinking. ‘I don’t know if I have that in me’.
Posing with her book in Harrogate. Pic: Gerard Binks
Asked to name her favourite authors she reels off Lisa Jewell, Gillian McAllister, Val McDermid, Mike Craven, Harlan Coben and Laura Shepherd Robinson.
What about her favourite crime novel?
It depends which day you ask me. My favourite one I’ve read recently is The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby by Ellery Lloyd, which is a husband-and-wife team. Lisa Jewell’s Don’t Let Him In is an amazing book, so is Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time. I could go on. I just eat books.
A second novel, which she hopes will be out in 2027, is in the pipeline. “This one will be much faster, and I’m enjoying it. Now I’m not intimidated by the process and it’s fun.”
What advice does she have for anyone thinking of writing a book?
Just go for it because there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Everyone’s got entirely different ways of doing it. All that matters is, get something down. If you’ve got an exciting end, write the end first and then go backwards. People worry about it. I call it the FOGS – the fear of getting started – writing that first word. Don’t start there – start with the drama if that’s how you find it easier.
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