“Who has their dog here?" asked columnist and author Caitlin Moran, who opened up her chat at Fringe By The Sea on Sunday by sharing her delight at the number of four-legged friends at the festival.

"Having dogs at festivals – we have reached perfection!” 

In conversation with journalist and broadcaster Jennifer Crichton, Moran spent the next 60 minutes speaking at 90mph with barely a pause or interruption.

Articulate and enthusiastic, she was a ball of energy who had the audience alternately laughing and crying – and cheering her rendition of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights.

Moran began her career at the age of 17, when she faxed a column she had written to The Times from her local newsagent.

She said: “I had barely made it through the door home when the Editor called me and said, 'Do you want a job?

“I was 32 before I realised that that’s not how you get a job in the media!”

Moran was born in Brighton and raised in Wolverhampton, the oldest of eight children.

Her father was often incapacitated by osteoarthtritis, and the family were on benefits – a fact her father asked them to keep a secret, in case anyone saw him on the rare occasions he was well enough to perform small tasks and reported him to the authorities.

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An unfortunate spilling of this secret to a tabloid-reading neighbour left Caitlin terrified that the benefits would be stopped because of her, and she decided she would need to get a job and earn some money to support her family. 

She published her first book, The Chronicles of Narmo, at the age of 16, then wrote three columns, two of which were published by The Observer and the last the one that got her a regular job in media, starting at The Times.

She said: “They wanted me to write a weekly opinion column but I said, 'I don’t think I’ve got 52 opinions a year. I haven’t done anything or been anywhere!' The wise decision I made was to write about other people for a while. And now I have 240 opinions a year!”

Caitlin Moran (image by Alex Lake)

Her career began with writing music reviews for Melody Maker – one of them a scathing criticism of the band Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. But now, at the age of 49, she has altered her opinion on what it takes to be a good columnist and writer.

Moran said: “We are encouraged to say I’m on this side, or I’m on this side, rather than just say, I don’t know.”

Now, rather than be bombastic with her opinions, she likes to take a middle ground and maintain diplomacy – but one subject she is passionate about is feminism. 

“I’m Team Tits until I die!” she told the audience. “Feminism is one of the most amazing things humans have done. It should feel like a celebratory thing you share with friends.”

Moran published her first celebration of feminism, How To Be A Woman, in 2011, and her second, More Than A Woman, in 2020.

“I wanted to write a fun book. Women are always being given how-to books – usually about how to lose weight,” she said, in defence of a book that celebrates women and feminism. 

Moran touched more deeply and personally on the subject of losing weight when she talked about her daughter’s battle with an eating disorder.

The teenager was ill for three years, while her mother went through the full gamut of emotions, from fear to anger to sadness – with some attempts to “jolly” her daughter out of the illness thrown in.

Her matter-of-fact tone did not undermine the horror of the subject, and there were a lot of tears shed in the audience.

Her latest book is What About Men?, published last year.

She said: “When you go into a bookshop, there’s a women’s section, with how-to books to help with every problem.

“Men have a litany of problems but there are no books about them in the shops – there is no men’s section.

“I waited for a man to write a book about it but I’ve waited 10 years – if you want something done, ask a middle aged mum.”

She recited a list of statistics as evidence of the mental health crisis facing young men.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for men under the age of 50 in the UK; 75 per cent of deaths by suicide are males, and they are three times more likely to die by suicide than women; only 36 per cent of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men; men are almost two times more likely to binge drink than women, and are three times as likely to die as a result of alcohol abuse; 49 per cent of men feel more depressed than they admit to the people in their life.

And Moran referred to “toxic masculinity” as a reason for men’s struggles with their mental health and with their failure to seek support. 

“It starts at [the age of] six,” Caitlin explained. “The most screwed up kid in the class telling boys what they should be.

“It’s a small number of men who make life difficult for women and other men.”

In a world where teenage boys are surrounded by messaging of what women can do and be – the first women to go here, the first woman to achieve this – Caitlin argued that there are no positive male role models for boys.

The likes of Jordan B Peterson and Andrew Tate encourage our teen boys, she believed, to demand that their female teachers "make them a sandwich". 

“Men’s lives have been made smaller and they don’t seem to have realised. When women’s lives were made smaller we did something about it,” she said.

“We need to find a new way to be positive about boys.”

What About Men? is available in bookshops now.