How did you get the job as nanny to the sons of Mary-Kay Wilmers [co-founder of the London Review of Books]?
My sister Vic was working in a nursing home – I'd worked there too. I left school at 14. The old ladies took the Lady magazine. We'd look at the classifieds and fantasise. I thought: I'd like to leave Leicestershire and be a nanny in London. I applied in writing and had a nice, informal interview. Mary-Kay and I checked each other out. She was lovely. I had rehearsed things to say: the importance of fresh air, ABC, washing behind ears. I improvised too, because I was clever enough to notice fresh air might not be especially high on their agenda. I'd noticed wall-to-wall books and my comment was: "I love books, especially the classics." Mary-Kay nodded and smiled. "Such as Dickens… and Herriot." I was a country girl, had grown up with dogs and horses. But she loved it.
You had a teasing relationship with Mary-Kay from the start?
She was like a more sorted version of my mum – divorced, booky, unorthodox. Typically, at that first meeting, she let the boys interview me. They were nine and 10 – it was Sam who the nanny who got the job would spend most time with [he has Riley-Day syndrome, a rare condition affecting the nervous system]. He asked which football team I supported. If I'd looked around, I'd have seen his West Ham trophies. I said: "Leicester City." Sam said: "Oh, right." He didn't give anything away. I drove back down the motorway, thinking the interview had gone well. Then Mary-Kay rang to say I had not got the job because of Leicester frigging City. So I went to live in France. Six months later, Mary-Kay offered me the job. I was delighted. I had been weeping into my café au lait in France – bored (it was there I got into the habit of letter writing).
What were your first reactions to the household?
I was pleased Gloucester Crescent was a shabby street. I felt relief it wasn't grand. It was quirky with lovely rooms and nice big windows, bits of Victoriana, wooden floors. In the country, grand people lived in detached houses. This was a terraced house – albeit a pretty one.
How did it differ from home?
I come from an unorthodox family. We had been wealthy but lost everything. My mother was posh, with upper-class habits. We lived in a village where her behaviour didn't fit. She had been married off to an older guy. My father's family business went bust, my mother divorced and found herself raising four children single-handed. For a while she drove a van for Initial towels. She'd change roller towels in pub toilets by day, read Wesker by night. Going from an unorthodox family to Mary-Kay seemed to work. I felt at home. I have lots of younger half-siblings and cast myself as an elder sister to Sam and Will. We were a prankish family, always joking.
And they were on for that?
They were.
Did you write down dialogue as it happened?
No. And I don't remember setting out dialogue like a play. But it's all there in black and white – or green and white, actually. I used to write letters at night unless Sam was poorly or in hospital. Sam was so funny – his malapropisms are marvellous. I remember him coming back to England from abroad saying: "Good old terracotta."
Alan Bennett comes across as avuncular.
I wasn't terribly interested in him at the time. He was a bloke. Vic and I weren't big on blokes, we hadn't had much to do with father types. But he was much funnier than I tell, and I liked him much more than the letters reveal. I knew my sister wouldn't be interested in a 40-year-old playwright and I was trying to sell my life to her so I pretended he was on Coronation Street. I'm struggling with Alan Bennett at the moment. He was a bit mardy on Front Row because I've exposed him as a handyman. I'd have loved to be exposed as a handyman myself. But maybe he's being taunted in Primrose Hill – being asked about his Black & Decker Workmate…
Was Jonathan Miller offended when you took him for an opera singer?
No – he thought it was funny. It was me who was defensive: I didn't like being laughed at and felt an idiot.
Was it the Gloucester Crescent influence that nudged you to do English A-level?
It was – and my friend Mark Nunney [now her husband, then a volunteer assistant looking after Claire Tomalin's disabled son Tom]. I believed I'd never go to college because of not slogging it out at school. I did my degree at Thames Poly in humanities and then worked in a frock shop in Camden. Nunney said: "You've got to get a proper job." I got a job in marketing with publishers Harcourt Brace Jovanich – I name-dropped like mad at the interview. Nunney and I split up for a few years. He lived in the Alps, crossed the US in a car, did the things adventurous people do before dropping back into my life and chivvying me on.
Was your sister writing letters and does she share your comic gift?
She does, although she was writing dull, scrappy little letters because I already knew her marvellous world. She might write: "Mr Tims is giving me driving lessons." I would reply: "But Mr Tims is 90! And you can't have driving lessons from a resident!"
Do you have children?
Two kids – a girl (14) and a boy (11). We live in Truro, Cornwall. Nunney is a big surfer. We moved from Crouch End. I'd secretly thought: no way. But we came for a holiday to St Ives and I thought it was fantastic – arty and fun. I said: I'll try it for a year. We've been here 11.
We don't find out much about your romance with Nunney?
Claire Tomalin recently said: "Nina was always after our volunteers." And there was a bit of truth in that – ready-made boyfriends. But Mark was outstandingly marvellous.
How has the success of Love, Nina affected you?
It has been so exciting. Can you imagine?
And now Penguin is publishing your autobiographical novel in November?
I wrote the first draft on an autobiography and fiction course. Penguin asked if I still had it. I sent it in, assuming it would never be mentioned again. And now I am so nervous because – oh God, it's revealing...
