CFP #33 – Emma Kennedy

Creative Forces with Guy Kilty

Emma Kennedy is a best -selling author, TV writer, actor and presenter. After growing up in Stevenage and Hitchen then studying at Oxford University, where she met and performed with comedians Richard Herring and Stewart Lee, Emma spent three years as a solicitor before quitting to become a full-time writer. Since then she’s written for and starred in TV shows like Goodness Gracious Me, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, The Smoking Room and Late Lunch with Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, as well as The Kennedys, a BBC comedy series based on her childhood. Her first book, How To Bring Up Your Parents, came out in 2007 and her second, The Tent, The Bucket and Me, about her family camping holidays, appeared two years later. Since then she’s written eight more, including the Wilma Tenderfoot series of children’s books. In among all that she’s also won Celebrity Masterchef and Celebrity Mastermind. In this interview, hear how Emma defied all expectations to get to Oxford, why she knew instantly she’d made a big mistake becoming a lawyer, and why she has a new-found love of Lego.