In conversation with Caitlin Moran: Raised By Wolves, horny teenage girls and working class telly
RadioTimes.com met the outspoken feminist on the set of her Channel 4 comedy - and she didn't disappoint
In the end they asked the actress who plays Della to decide and never tell them. (Caitlin: “If only we could have devolved all the arguments we had in our childhood to an actress who could make that final call for us. Instead it was just one long process of attrition.”)
Their unusual upbringing will be familiar to readers of Caitlin's feminist polemic How to Be a Woman or her weekly columns in The Times. The eight Moran kids were home-educated in the loosest sense, cooped up in a three-bedroomed council house in Wolverhampton with their hippy parents.
Caroline: “We’ve hopefully made Raised by Wolves a little bit more interesting than our actual lives. Because if we’d made a sitcom about what our actual lives were like it would just be like Gogglebox – a lot of people sitting on the sofa watching television and making sarcastic comments about it.”
Della is played by Rebekah Staton
There are some scenes straight out of the family history book though. Look out for a trip to the Dorchester, the nightclub and Wolverhampton institution where the Moran sisters would dance to the six records the DJs used to play on repeat – if they could convince the bouncers they were 16.
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Caitlin: “I think we all celebrated our 16th birthdays in the Dorchester at least three times.”
Germaine's run-in with a bus driver is based on a less fond memory.
Caitlin: “The bus drivers would never believe we were 15 and eligible for a half-fare because we were quite hefty girls and we’d always be carrying a toddler – one of our siblings – so we looked like teenage mums.
“I had a feud jotter where I would write the name of all the people I was feuding with at the time – and the bus driver was number one in my feud jotter at that time.”
Aretha and Germaine with family
More excruciating is a country excursion where the girls happen upon a horse’s erection, another “verbatim reenactment”. Caroline winces just remembering and reaches for another Nurofen. Caitlin claps her hands in glee.
Caroline: “You were very aroused. The horse wasn’t.”
Caitlin: “It was really exciting! I’d never seen one that big!”
Caroline: “I’m right back there in that field.”
Caitlin was the oldest child and by her own account a pain in the bum. But what was she really like?
Caroline: “A massive pain in the arse.”
Caitlin: “I was.”
Caroline: “She thinks it’s hilarious how we’ve made her into this really annoying character – that’s exactly what she was like!”
This time her big sister demurs.
Caitlin: “Germaine’s much more reasonable than I was. I was basically Toad of Toad Hall. Very overbearing. I had no friends and we were in that house 24/7 and I had big dreams and big ideas.”
Caroline: “That I didn’t want to hear about.”
