At 65 Judy Murray is at the top of her game - tennis champ, coach, mother, grandmother and now bestselling author
This week Judy Murray will appear at the new St Andrew’s Book Festival in London, serving up an ace in the form of her bestselling debut fiction novel The Wild Card, which was published this summer.
The former national tennis champ - 64 titles - national coach, mother to Andy and Jamie, grandmother and Strictly contestant will be talking about the book that took her into the bestsellers lists for the second time. Following the success of her 2017 memoir, Knowing the Score she will appear at the Festival along with a host of Scottish authors including Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin, Lorraine Kelly, Judy Murray, Ann Cleeves, Andrew O’Hagan and Jackie Kay. And not one for sitting still, when we meet in Edinburgh she has 12 pages of her next book in her bag to edit on the train on her way home to Perthshire.
This week Judy Murray will appear at the new St Andrew’s Book Festival in London, serving up an ace in the form of her bestselling debut fiction novel The Wild Card, which was published this summer.
The former national tennis champ - 64 titles - national coach, mother to Andy and Jamie, grandmother and Strictly contestant will be talking about the book that took her into the bestsellers lists for the second time. Following the success of her 2017 memoir, Knowing the Score she will appear at the Festival along with a host of Scottish authors including Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin, Lorraine Kelly, Judy Murray, Ann Cleeves, Andrew O’Hagan and Jackie Kay. And not one for sitting still, when we meet in Edinburgh she has 12 pages of her next book in her bag to edit on the train on her way home to Perthshire.
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00:00This is Janet Christie at the Scotsman, speaking to Judy Murray.
00:04A former Scottish international tennis player with 64 titles to her name,
00:09Scottish national coach from 1995, a Strictly Come Dancing contestant,
00:13Judy Murray is now a best-selling author with her first novel, The Wild Card.
00:18She'll be appearing at the New St Andrews Book Festival in London on Thursday 28th November.
00:24Can you tell us about The Wild Card? What's it about?
00:28The Wild Card is a story of Abigail Paterson and it's two halves of her life.
00:34So the first 17 years where she overcomes some really quite horrific adversity in her young life,
00:41finds solace in tennis, unexpectedly becomes one of the most promising juniors in Britain
00:47and then is forced to give up at the age of 17.
00:51And the second half of her life, which is the present of the story,
00:54is her on her way to Wimbledon to play on the centre court for the first time,
00:59fulfilling the childhood dream against all the odds, having come through the pre-qualifying and the qualifying.
01:05And she's in the courtesy car, she hears the radio presenters talking about her,
01:10remembering her as an outstanding young talent,
01:13wondering what's happened to her in the last 20 years because she disappeared off the face of the earth.
01:18And they're asking the listeners to fill them in,
01:21if anybody has any information would you let us know what she's been doing in the last 20 years
01:25because she is of course by now the sensation of the tournament.
01:29And she panics in the back seat because she realises that the secret that she has been keeping for 20 years
01:35is about to come out in the full view of the public eye.
01:41Okay, and we're not going to reveal the secret obviously.
01:44What does it feel like to write another bestseller?
01:48Yeah, I did a memoir which was in lots of ways easier because it's your life and you go through it chronologically.
01:56It's the first time I've done a work of fiction and it's great fun because your imagination can go anywhere.
02:03So although there is a lot of behind the scenes, particularly of Wimbledon,
02:08of understanding all the people that are involved, whether that's the other competitors, the entourages,
02:13the organisers, the media and also just how you manage the day to day practice, the match etc.
02:24So there's a lot of behind the scenes content, it includes a bird's eye view of the dressing rooms and all the rest of it.
02:31So I think there's a lot of detail in there if you're a tennis fan because most of us that are tennis fans,
02:37we just see the performance and we don't see what goes into making the performance.
02:41So there was an opportunity to share many of the things that I've seen, heard and experienced through my many years of being on the tennis circuit.
02:50Okay, and we have your Strictly partner, Antoine Dubé, to thank for this partly.
02:57Yeah, it actually was entirely down to him that he's written about seven novels now that are all set in the ballroom dancing world
03:04and they say you should only write about what you know.
03:07And during COVID, he sent me a proof copy of his first novel to read, which was brilliant and I loved it.
03:14And we got chatting about why I loved it and I loved all the detail.
03:18I love the behind the scenes, the understanding of how the ballroom dance world operated.
03:23And he said, you should write one that's set in the tennis world.
03:26Think of all the things that you have experienced that people would love to hear about.
03:32And he set me up with his literary agent on a Zoom, which was all we did in the COVID days.
03:38And that was really where it started. The idea started from there.
03:42And as I started plotting down things that I thought would be interesting to talk about,
03:46I realised that a work of fiction gives you an opportunity to raise awareness of all sorts of issues for me that still exist in terms of the sporting world for women.
03:59But you can do it through a fictional situation.
04:02So you're not pointing the finger at anybody or anything directly, but they will raise a talking point.
04:08And hopefully by raising talking points, we can effect change in the longer term.
04:12OK, and just chief among those issues, what would you say they are?
04:16Yeah, well, I mean, one of the main things that we explore is the abuse of power.
04:21You know, whether that's coach player, fitness trainer, agent, you know, there are a lot of things.
04:28I think they really all came hugely to the surface when Simone Biles and the gymnasts took the team doctor to court.
04:35And it was interesting for me because it's very much the case that when something happens to you as a very young athlete, you don't know how to deal with it.
04:44You don't know who to go to. You're scared of losing your place in the team or your sponsorship and so forth.
04:49And so you hold it to yourself. And it's usually not till very much later when you're mature enough to be able to speak up about it.
04:57That something actually happens. And when she and the other gymnasts spoke up, the catalogue of abuse over many, many years from the team doctor was absolutely horrific.
05:08But it raised awareness, it created talking points and it became a catalyst for change in safeguarding women's sport.
05:16OK, great. And what do your sons think?
05:20Well, they sort of roll their eyes whenever I do something a little bit, a little bit different, but they're always incredibly supportive.
05:27But also, I just think protective of worried in case anything goes wrong. But actually, Wildcard's been very well received.
05:36Yeah, so take that. And oh, can you talk about the next one?
05:43Yeah, I probably can a little.
05:46OK, there's going to be another one.
05:48Yeah, there's a murder in the pipeline. It's almost finished. It's at the editing stage. It's going to be out in May, but I love a hood on it.
05:57So it's set in a tennis club. It's not specifically about tennis. It's just set in the environment of a tennis club.
06:04But I reckon we've all got a murder in us if the circumstances are right.
06:09OK, thanks very much. Thanks, Judy.