Editions

How to be Famous

How to be Famous

Life is always better backstage, isn't it?

'Who better than Caitlin Moran to bring fame down to earth with a bump' - Helen Fielding, bestselling author of Bridget Jones's Diary

The Sunday Times Number One bestseller about a young women making it in a world where men hold all the power

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I’m Johanna Morrigan, and I live in London in 1995, at the epicentre of Britpop. I might only be nineteen, but I’m wise enough to know that everyone around me is handling fame very, very badly.

My unrequited love, John Kite, has scored an unexpected Number One album, then exploded into a Booze And Drugs HellTM – as rockstars do. And my new best friend – the maverick feminist Suzanne Banks, of The Branks – has amazing hair, but writer’s block and a rampant pill problem. So I’ve decided I should become a Fame Doctor. I’m going to use my new monthly column for The Face to write about every ridiculous, surreal, amazing aspect of a million people knowing your name.

But when my two-night-stand with edgy comedian Jerry Sharp goes wrong, people start to know my name for all the wrong reasons. ‘He’s a vampire. He destroys bright young girls. Also, he’s a total dick’ Suzanne warned me. But by that point, I’d already had sex with him. Bad sex.
Now I’m one of the girls he’s trying to destroy.
He needs to be stopped.

But how can one woman stop a bad, famous, powerful man?

Scroll down to watch a video of Caitlin describing How to be Famous in three words
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'A deliciously funny sequel to How to Build a Girl' - Red Magazine

'This is funny, philosophical, and poignant in equal measure. Glorious and life-enhancing' - Nina Stibbe

'A filthy, gutsy, exhilarating call to arms' - Emma-Jane Unsworth

Reviews

  • Who better than Caitlin Moran to bring fame down to earth with a bump

    HELEN FIELDING, bestselling author of Bridget Jones's Diary

  • It's quite a ride, this book. It's laugh-out-loud funny, sweetly romantic and fiercely angry. Often all at once ... beautifully written

    THE TIMES

  • A deeply satisfying tale of sex, drugs, britpop, unrequited love, London, and a narrator I completely adore. This is funny, philosophical, and poignant in equal measure. Glorious and life-enhancing

    NINA STIBBE

  • Brilliantly funny, caustic social commentary with the best-wish fulfilment revenge scene I've read, like, ever

    THE POOL

  • A rollicking fantasy which leaves a rosy afterglow

    Book of the Day, GUARDIAN

More from this Author

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About the Author

Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran is the eldest of eight children, home-educated on a council estate in Wolverhampton, believing that if she were very good and worked very hard, she might one day evolve into Bill Murray. She published a children’s novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, at the age of 16, and became a columnist at The Times at 18. She has gone on to be named Columnist of the Year six times. At one point, she was also Interviewer and Critic of the Year - which is good going for someone who still regularly mistypes ‘the’ as ‘hte’. Her multi-award-winning bestseller How to Be a Woman has been published in 28 countries, and won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2011. Her two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, were Sunday Times bestsellers, and her novel, How to Build a Girl, debuted at Number One, and is currently being adapted as a movie. She co-wrote two series of the Rose d’Or-winning Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves with her sister, Caroline. Caitlin lives on Twitter with her husband and two children, where she spends her time tweeting either about civil rights issues, or that picture of Bruce Springsteen when he was 23, and has his top off. She would like to be remembered as ‘a very sexual humanitarian’.

Caitlin Moran

Related articles

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Recommendations

What Caitlin Moran is reading this summer: nature writing, recipes and some new feminist classics

The journalist and bestselling author talks us through her seasonal must-reads, from Robert Macfarlane's Underland to Ottolenghi's Simple.
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Features

Caitlin Moran | Putting the fun back into feminism

Caitlin Moran talks about her latest novel How to be Famous, writing good (and bad) sex scenes and why she thinks it's important for young women to get angry
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Extracts

Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran

The award-winning columnist and author Caitlin Moran discusses the concept of change in this chapter from her book, Moranifesto

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