LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 49

Janet Ellis submitted the manuscript for her novel anonymously.
Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer
The actress and presenter’s debut novel is the dark tale of a
rebellious girl in 18th-century London
The Butcher’s Hook doesn’t read like a first novel – it is a high-finish
performance. Its heroine is an 18th-century teenage girl, who starts
demurely although her sex drive turns out to be anything but demure.
You need to be braced for violence to rival any Jacobean tragedy: The
Butcher’s Hook will hook you. I exclaimed to my husband over one
extreme scene, to which he joked: “Isn’t that just what you’d expect
from a former Blue Peter presenter?” Between 1983-87, Janet Ellis
presented the children’s programme (“the golden years,” she laughs), but
submitted her novel anonymously to publishers. She is not the type to
rest on her laurels – or, it would seem, to rest at all.
I did that stupid thing of saying I wanted to write a novel… Don't say
it… just bloody do it!
We meet at her Chiswick home where she has lived for a quarter of a
century (her three children – one is the pop star Sophie Ellis-Bextor –
are grown up and there are grandchildren). She and her house are a
match for each other: pretty, warm and lively. We talk over coffee. Born
into an army family, she has wanted to write novels all her life, and
“from when I was little” wanted to act. “I was a Kentish maid, though
we spent six years on postings in Germany. I went to seven different
schools.” At 17, she got into the Central School of Drama where “I
practised being afraid”. Her first television role was on Jackanory
Playhouse as Princess Griselda (the BBC fought for her Equity card,
which was “extraordinary” because “for seven-eighths of Griselda’s
story, she is changed into a pot plant”).
As the decades disappeared, she never gave up the idea of becoming a
novelist: “I did that stupid thing of saying I wanted to write a novel to
my poor family and friends. Don’t say it unless you’re going to do it.
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