“I grew up in the golden age of the great 1980s mini-series and prime-time soaps: Hollywood Wives, Princess Daisy, Lace, Dynasty, Dallas. Even today I don’t think television has quite matched them when it comes to portraying wealth, glamour, excess, and the deeply dysfunctional lives of people with too much money and power. The Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals comes closest. They were heightened and camp, certainly, but underneath all the shoulder pads and champagne there was something almost Shakespearean about them. Contemporary TV approaches those worlds differently. Succession sharpened the satirical edge of wealth and privilege, while Euphoria impresses me for its sheer fearlessness. As for books, I recently re-read American Psycho and was struck all over again by how close it is to a perfect satire of late-1980s and early-1990s consumer culture.

It’s fearless, hilarious, and was profoundly misunderstood when it was first published. Reading it again in 2026, it also felt startlingly contemporary, particularly in its parallels to influencer culture, performative wealth, materialism, and social hypocrisy. While I don’t go to the same extremes as Bret Easton Ellis, I do see similarities between what he was attempting and what I’m trying to do in Posh and especially Trash. Other influences include Edward St Aubyn, particularly the Patrick Melrose novels, and more recently Allen Bratton’s extraordinary Henry Henry: aristocratic satire executed perfectly. And honestly, the Real Housewives franchise can hardly be viewed as anything other than satire at this point: unintentional perhaps, but satire nonetheless. That’s very much the world Trash inhabits.”