Cruise Weekly recently caught up with author and Scenic godmother Kathy Lette, at the christening of the new Scenic Jasper.
1. What is the highlight of your career?
Being writer in residence the Savoy Hotel. But parting was such suite sorrow.
2. What is your favourite holiday spot and why?
My favourite destination is a cosy little spot which goes by the name of G. But obviously I can’t give too many details about who takes me there and how often. Apart from that – holidaying in two fibro shacks with my large and loony family each Xmas, down the south coast.
3. What is one of the most exotic destinations you have travelled to?
Book tours have taken me all over the world, from Dubrovnik to Dunedin. Travel stories have taken me from Moscow to the Maldives. But the most exotic destination was the Brazilian rainforest where I ate piranha. I thought I’d better eat it, before it ate me. It’s like dieting from the inside.
4. What is one thing you cannot leave home without?
When visiting the tropics, a solar powered vibrator, naturally. And books of course. No matter how many cyclones or storms are raging, you can always slip between some scintillating, comforting covers. (I highly recommend my latest novel, “Courting Trouble”, she says, modestly!)
5. What is the most common item you leave at home?
My children.
6. Do you have an embarrassing travel story you could share with us?
Authors need a R.S.P.C.W. ¬ Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Writers. In Philadelphia the audience booed me so badly I had to leave the stage. I found out later the organisers had got my appearance mixed up with Senator John McCaine. Oh well, at least the next night he was going to get my readers ¬ breast squiring mums, feminists and the entire gay community.
7. Do you have a travel tip you can provide our readers with?
Never eat anything from a road side stand.
8. What three features do you look for when choosing a hotel?
In the tropics – I like a resort so exclusive that not even the tide can get in.
In the city – charming, kind staff. There’s nothing worse than service with a snarl.
Everywhere – ¬ a proper lap pool, at least 25 metres. I like to dive in the deep end, in leisure as well as in life!
9. What is your favourite piece of luggage and why?
A human handbag draped over my arm ¬preferably Brad Pitt or George Clooney or some other love god.
10. Who is one person you wish you could sit next to on a plane?
A Nobel prize winning, hot to trot, drop dead gorgeous billionaire who says I’m whisking you away in this private jet of mine to a remote Pacific island where I will lick the roe of virgin sturgeon from your navel, beneath a tropical palm while you tell me which feminist charities you’d like me to support.
11. What is one food you would like to see added to an airline menu?
A toy boy on a bed of lettuce.
12. Do you have a favourite childhood travel memory, and if so can you share it with us?
Learning to body surf with my darling Dad in Coolangatta, hurtling to shore like human hydrofoils, the sun sizzling on our backs.
13. Where are you planning on travelling to next?
Cruising from Vienna to Budapest. When Scenic asked me to be Godmother of their new luxury cruise liner, I agreed as long as I could have a leopard-print-mini-skirted figurehead in a push-up bra. Now I can finally say that I have prowess. And of course, a really big bust.
SOURCE Scenic