Lette's talk about sex

She is an energy-ball of humour, spouting off her views on men's weaknesses and women's strengths in hilarious tones similar to those in her novels.

And she's not scared of discussing the finer points of sex, but not in an embarrassing, cringe-making way, more as if she were on a girls' night out and you were her best pal.

Her own friends include the glitterati of literature - Salman Rushdie, Stephen Fry, John Mortimer, to name but a few - and it doesn't take long to realise that there is a depth to Lette that many who just enjoy her funny novels, including Foetal Attraction and Mad Cows, might miss.

Her outspoken and sometimes outrageous manner make her the life and soul of any party, although she jokes that she always buys nice shoes because she puts her foot in her mouth so often.

Currently leading a champagne lifestyle as the writer in residence in a riverside suite at one of London's swankiest hotels, The Savoy, where she will be holed up for the next three months, she can't believe her luck.

"I keep asking my girlfriends to ring me up to ask me the time, so I can say, 'Just let me look out of the window at Big Ben'.

''This is better than winning the Booker Prize. This is the best gig in literature. Talk about housework avoidance techniques,'' she jokes.

Lette will be adding more fizz to the proceedings when she goes undercover as a maid in the hotel to research the book she'll be writing while there.

''I'm going to look in everybody's knickers drawers and wear their face cream. And I can go and eat in the staff canteen any time. The material I'll get will be so good," she says.

Lette was among the first to kick-start the chick lit genre but now feels it has deteriorated into Mills & Boon with G-spots.

She can't stand Bridget Jones because it always assumes that women have to have a man and cannot be happy until they find one. She doesn't go with that theory at all.

Her latest novel, Dead Sexy, is a fun-filled romp about two people who win a 'Desperate and Dateless' TV competition and have to marry each other to win a fabulous penthouse flat, a five-star honeymoon and a lot of money.

Lette turns the sex war on its head, as much of the book centres on the heroine trying to get her man into the sack on their honeymoon and finding the act of trying to make him consummate their marriage far harder than she anticipated.

''I did want to break that taboo about this idea that women still have to be good,'' she says.

There are plenty of naughty bits, which Lette relishes.

''I write them in bed in my silk pyjamas, always. I have to get myself in the mood, darling. I often have a glass of champagne first and I hang up pictures of gorgeous men.

''I keep saying to my husband that I'll have to have an affair to get more material. It would be all for literature.

''He says he should have the affair because it would give me more angst and hence a better book. We are currently negotiating.''

Joking apart, Lette is married to human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, with whom she has two children, Julius and Georgie. They met through Kylie Minogue, she recalls.

''In Australia he has a chat show. Kylie Minogue was booked on to the programme but at the last minute, she couldn't go, so he said, 'Get me another motormouth to stick between boring politicians and be lively'. So they booked me.

''We fell in love across a crowded studio, but Geoff keeps saying, 'If only Kylie had come, I'd now be married to her'.''

It wasn't all hearts and flowers, though. Lette and Robertson were both already in relationships.

''I was already married. I left my husband a week later. Geoff was going out with Nigella Lawson at the time. I keep thinking, God you made a mistake. I can't cook. I burn. I'm the takeaway queen.

''It was traumatic but really exciting. But when I came here (to Britain) the gossip columns put me in social Siberia. It took me a while to make friends,'' says Lette.

She moved to London 14 years ago and at first hated it and was shunned by the circles in which her husband mixed.

''They were writing letters saying what a terrible mistake he'd made. So I started to write their dialogue down and after that, they got a bit nice to me because they thought I might impale them on the end of my pen,'' she says.

Writing comedy seems to come naturally to Lette.

''Women are funny. I just write in the way women talk when there's no men around. Men think we spend the entire time talking about the length of their members, which is not true, because we also talk about the width which, after chocolate, is so much more important.''

Having children has stolen some of her identity, she admits, but does have its advantages.

''Having kids makes you more compassionate and not so black and white about things. I think it broadens your experience so much and gives you so much more to write about and makes you a more rounded person.

''I used to think that for every baby, a woman author lost about three books - but I don't think that now.''

There simply isn't time for a mother to get writer's block or associated angsts if she's looking after kids, she says.

And at 43, her sex life has never been better.

''Women in their 40s are in their sexual prime, once you've had your babies and you're not inhibited about your body any more. And you can afford the lingerie! I'm having a fine time,'' says Lette.

Her male friends, she admits, sometimes tire of her constantly having a pop at men in her books. She says: ''Geoff doesn't, though. He passionately believes in the feminist agenda I have, even though I dress it up as comedy. I think women are each other's human Wonderbras - uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better.

''I do still think it's a man's world. There's no equal pay. We're still getting concussion hitting our head on the glass ceiling, which is why I take literary pot shots at them.''

Lette still has her legendary girls' nights out - it's the first thing she organises when she goes back to visit her family and friends in Australia.

''It's just so bad,'' she beams. ''We all get totally drunk and we have categories, from what was the most outrageous act of the spouse last year, to what was the most embarrassing sex act we did with someone we didn't know very well. It's a quick way of catching up and it's hilarious.''

Would she allow her children - aged 12 and ten - to read her books?

She hasn't so far, she admits.

''Some of my son's friends say 'Your mother writes porn','' she says.

But she's trained him to retaliate with: ''My mother writes feminist satires on the contemporary situation of females.''

Somehow, you know that Lette will always have the last laugh.

* Dead Sexy, by Kathy Lette (Simon & Schuster, £14.99).