KEY POINTS:
In many ways Louise Bagshawe's latest novel, Glitz, is absolutely typical of her back catalogue.
There are beautiful and clever girls (the four Chambers cousins), united by a common enemy (their evil, gay uncle and his new fiancee Bai-Ling), who threatens something important to them (their trust funds). So they work together (they try to discredit her before she can get pregnant) only to learn a lesson (that money isn't the answer) along the way. At the end, the evil people are dead and the Chambers girls are happy and have all met lovely men.
Anyone tempted to write in damning me for the spoiler, clearly doesn't understand this genre. I read five of Bagshawe's 12 books before the interview but I could have just as well read one. You know the ending (happiness, nice men) from the start.
And Bagshawe agrees: "I write within a genre. The genre of 80s blockbuster. I wouldn't consider that to be a formula any more than I'd consider a sonnet to be a formula. But it is a certain genre that requires certain elements: big stakes, masculine men, attractive women, riches."
She thinks her books have a respectable purpose as well: to empower women in their own lives. Indeed, several times she calls her books - which as well as Glitz, includes such titles as Sparkles, Glamour and A Kept Woman - "feminist literature".
"I've never been of the school of thought that believes if you're a feminist you can't like strong men," she says. "Or if you're a feminist you must be against pretty clothes and make-up. I don't think that's feminism at all. My idea of feminism is you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that's the fundamental starting point of all my books."
They do, however, feature beautiful women. In Glitz, for instance, there's Venus with her "thousand-watt smile" and "expensively dyed flaxen-blonde hair. [Her] shimmering, pearlescent robe doing little to conceal her golden skin and curvy breasts." And these women might be successful businesswomen in their own right but the focus is often on their interactions with men - when Sophie ("gorgeous skin, glossy chestnut brown hair, bright eyes"), the heroine of Sparkles, marries Hugh (bigamously as it turns out), she is forever "throwing back her head and clutching at Hugh; [as] waves of pleasure rock through her".
"I think you can make yourself beautiful," Bagshawe argues. "When I was about 12 or 13, I had really thick Coke-bottle glasses - I was ugly. Then I got contact lenses and lost some weight and dyed my hair and as a result my life changed. It's not about being Barbie, but I think a girl that presents herself well, is confident and is dressed well, she is attractive to men. And I don't think it's anti-feminist to want to be attractive to men."
Her stories might not reflect how she really lives, and Bagshawe admits they are not even "hugely possible". However, they are an escape to a fictional paradise.
Bagshawe's real life has taken a turn that seems as unlikely as any of her plotlines. The author is standing as the Conservative Party candidate for Corby and East Northhamptonshire and is hotly picked to be an MP after the next election.
She joined the party in 1984, aged 14. "I've always been a political girl," Bagshawe says. "Ever since I was small."
A foray into student politics at Oxford put her off pursuing a political career and she started writing novels instead. "Obviously I thought that there was no way I could go ahead and be a conservative politician with that background," she confesses. "But then [in 2005] David Cameron became the leader of the Conservative Party. He really didn't give a monkey's about my novels. I've always been an activist but he made me think I could stand as a candidate, too."
There was certainly a great deal of negative reaction when she was named as part of Cameron's "A-List" of candidates, alongside ex-Coro star Adam Rickett, now on Shortland Street (the "A-List" policy has since been discarded by the party in favour of gender-balanced shortlists).
"It was amazing to me as, at best, a mid-level best-selling writer to hear myself being described as a 'celebrity'. I mean in what world am I a celebrity? You're seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel here," Bagshawe says.
She hopes she's done enough since to prove her credentials, going door-knocking for her local council candidate when eight months pregnant (her baby son is about to turn 1, she also has a 3-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son) and appearing on political radio and television programmes.
"Once people got over that initial negativity I suppose having a profile of sorts has been an advantage," she admits.
But what if she's elected? How will she continue to churn out her rags-and-bitches tales of women pulling themselves up from the gutter and being rocked by the occasional wave of pleasure on the way?
"I don't see the contradiction," she says. "I think my books are enormously Conservative. They are feminist, yes, but again, I don't see the contradiction there. My political philosophy is that we as individuals have the ability to make it and the ability to overcome obstacles. And that's what my books are about."
She'll keep writing even if elected - "I can't afford the pay cut!" - snatching a few hours in between constituency business and bathing the children.
"I'll always write. Politics could do with a few fresh people who are interested in things close to women's hearts. I think it's good to have an untraditional background. Stuff the gravitas. I'm not interested in that."
