It all ads up for TV’s Lauren Laverne

Feb 27 2010 by Gordon Barr, The Journal

THERE seems little that Lauren Laverne cannot turn her hands to. From being a teen rock star to presenting The Culture Show on TV, plus her radio programmes, she’s also now writing a book - and eating lots of Doritos! An ambassador for the North East, she explains all to GORDON BARR.

IT’S confession time and television and radio personality Lauren Laverne isn’t holding back.

She’s sitting in a confessional booth in a cathedral and is about to reveal all.

Not to some priest you understand, rather to me – and via phone!

North East lass Lauren is in the cathedral down south for professional reasons, but is taking the time out to chat to me about her latest venture – a venture that has meant a lot of eating of Doritos, while also fitting in time to write her first novel.

Lauren, 31, is fronting a campaign to get budding filmmakers to enter a competition to have their Doritos ad screened on prime-time telly during the World Cup.

"The dark side is all those free Doritos," she laughs.

"The first shoot day, I was just stuffing my face. I’m going to have to redistribute the goodness among my friends. At least I’ll be popular."

Sunderland-born Lauren, a presenter on the Beeb’s The Culture Show and on BBC 6 Music, is genuinely excited at the thought of finding some homegrown talent for the campaign.

The Doritos King of Ads competition will see the eventual champion given the chance of winning up to £200,000 and have their ad aired on national TV.

"I was approached to do it and I thought it sounded like a really cool idea," she tells me.

"Film-making and advertising are notoriously hard industries to get into, so I thought it was a nice opportunity for someone.

"Basically Doritos are looking for someone to make an ad for them. Anyone can have a go. You don’t need to have fantastically good equipment, as long as you have got a good idea and can upload the adverts to the website.

"The eventual winner can win up to £200,000, depending on how many people vote for them, and they also get their advert played out during the World Cup, so lots of people will be watching it.

"I just felt it sounded like a really fun, interesting prize.

"We’re looking for genuinely engaging and interesting ideas that people are going to talk about once they have seen it – that water-cooler moment the next day when you go ‘did you see that thing?’

"Hopefully it is going to be really fun, and the other judges really know their onions.

"Noel Clarke is a Bafta award-winning actor, writer director – you name it he’s done it.

"Then there’s American advertising genius David Shane. He knows everything there is know – he created the Budweiser bull frog, which is a pretty iconic campaign.

"I think it is going to be really, really interesting couple of months."

Lauren, married to television producer and DJ Graeme Fisher, with whom she has a two-year-old boy Fergus, has long been an ambassador for nurturing and promoting North- East talent.

"I was just talking about that very thing with Field Music, a brilliant Sunderland band who I had on my show on 6Music," she says.

"The music scene up there is really vibrant but it is definitely the same for all arts.

"I think humour, originality and thinking your own thoughts are really what the North East is known for.

"People have a unique take on the world you maybe don’t have in other places, a perspective of their own, actually, because they are far removed from London and have a very strong cultural identity, so I’d love to see a bit of that.

"I know we are an inventive and funny region, so I am really looking forward to seeing what comes up."

Born and brought up in Sunderland, she first attended St. Mary's R.C. Primary School and then St. Anthony's R.C. Comprehensive School before going on to study English Literature, Social History and Sociology at City of Sunderland College.

It was during that time she formed the teen punk band Kenickie, enjoying four Top 40 hits, a Top 10 album, becoming the darlings of the British music press and relocating to London.

After Kenickie disbanded, she carved out a successful career for herself as a TV and radio presenter.

"The North East music scene is fantastic and I am an ambassador for the city of Sunderland as well," she says.

"I’m very proud to be from the region and always love coming home and seeing what’s going on. There is so much to catch up on really.

"I got my honorary degree last summer (from Sunderland University), which was such a surprise.

"It was lovely, really moving. I really didn’t know what to expect but on the day it was really nice.

"I went down to the Stadium of Light with my mam, and aunty Sharon and had a few tears.

"The Stadium is a brilliant venue and I am so happy they have got through with the World Cup bid so far.

"I come up quite a lot actually. Not every weekend, but every few weeks.

"My little boy loves it, the beach, his nan’s house, and seeing the family.

"Combining motherhood and a career can be hard.

"It’s just been hard, as anyone who’s got kids knows what that’s like.

"It was certainly hard for my nana, who had nine in a council house on the Ford Estate.

"Whenever I feel like moaning about it I think about her and my dad’s mam who has six and started off in one room in a basement in South Shields, off Ocean Road.

"So I could never really complain about it too much."

Lauren is heading back home in two weeks for the culmination of Sunderland schools’ annual choral competition, City Sings Goes International.

"I’m up judging it, which I am really looking forward to," she says.

"There will be loads of choirs from local schools singing in all the different languages. It is going to be immense, really cool."

On top of that she is also set to release her first book.

"I’m just finishing it at the moment. It’s set in the North East, and it’s an indie fairytale kind of thing about a young girl growing up in a little northern town who thinks her life is really boring. She dreams about starting a band and becoming really famous and escaping from everything. Then she finds out there is a lot more to her life than what she already thinks.

"Suddenly everything gets extremely interesting in various ways.

"Hopefully it’s funny – as it’s a comedy. "Bits of it are based on my own experience but it’s aimed at teenage girls. I was in a band when I was 15, which is how old my character is.

"It’s been simple but not easy – fighting to get the time to do it and putting the hours in.

"I’m hoping to have it published in the summer."

The Doritos King of Ads competition closes on April 30. To download the toolkit and submit your advert, visit www.doritos.co.uk