Dawn O'Porter on her proud Irish kids, Caroline Flack's death, and choosing kindness

Suzanne Harrington speaks to Dawn O’Porter about losing her dear friend Caroline Flack, leaving LA, and her latest novel

Dawn O'Porter. Picture: Toby Madden.

Dawn O’Porter is famous for all sorts of things — like adding an O’ to her surname to mark her marriage to Roscommon’s Chris O’Dowd. Having a haircut that channels Mary Quant, Anna Wintour, and Claudia Winkleman. A deep love of vintage clothing. Being the author of funny, successful books with titles like Cat Lady and The Cows. Being generally fabulous.

There is, however, a lot more to O’Porter than fame, bestsellers, hairdos and fashion. Shaped by early loss — her mum died when she was six — she has always been driven to connect and bond, and to care about others. We’ll come back to that.

But first, another new book, her latest novel, Honeybee, comes out on September 26. Although a stand-alone read, it takes up the story of Renee and Flo, the BFF characters from her first two novels, 2013’s Paper Aeroplanes and 2014’s Goose. We initially met Renee and Flo aged 15, then again at 18; now, in the summer of 2001 — memorable for an event that September that shook the world — they are 22, and navigating work, relationships, family dynamics, big cities versus small islands (much of the book is set on Guernsey, where O’Porter grew up), and dealing with alcohol addiction when you’re too young to be addicted to anything except fun.

“It was lovely to write about those girls again,” O’Porter says. Like connecting with old friends. “That was always the intention. Writing a book when you already know the characters is a whole other experience.” 

Following the success of The Cows (2016), So Lucky (2019) and Cat Lady (2022), her publishers asked her to revisit her first two novels and write a third. I wonder if Renee, the slightly chaotic wannabe writer, is a fictional version of her younger self?

“The summer I was 22 was a significant time in my life,” she says. “All the education was done, I was back in Guernsey, I had this feeling of, ‘Oh fuck, I’m an adult now, I’m supposed to move to London and be successful, but I have no idea how to do this.’” 

Renee’s best friend Flo is a composite character whose alcoholism was inspired by the real-life experiences of a close school friend. At school, O’Porter and her friend would “write epic notes to each other, incredibly personal notes — she was someone I could really share with.” She was further inspired by her friend’s recovery while still in her 20s, dispelling the myth that young people are somehow immune from alcoholism.

Author Dawn with her husband, Chris O’Dowd. Picture: Hannah McKay/PA

Now 45, O’Porter and O’Dowd and their two sons, Art and Valentine, aged nine and seven, moved back to London from LA last summer after almost 16 years there. Before her writing took off, she had been living in LA doing TV work for Channel 4 (in the Noughties she made documentaries exploring a range of stuff from size zero to polyamory) when she met her future husband, who turned up at her birthday party and moved in with her four months later. They married in 2012, and became parents in 2015. Since leaving LA, she is much happier.

“I love being back,” she says. “There’s so much to do in London, it’s so fun — especially with the kids.” She pauses. “America for me had become so uncomfortable. After the pandemic, and George Floyd, and Trump making everything worse, it’s a very anxious country and I started to absorb that anxiety, and it was uncomfortable.” 

She enjoys the proximity of Ireland from the family’s London home. They’re frequent visitors to Boyle, Co Roscommon.

“My kids are so proud of their Irishness,” she says. “Our eldest is incredibly patriotic — he’ll tell you he’s Irish. What’s nice about being back in London is that we get to connect with [Ireland] a lot more, we go back a lot. My mother-in-law is amazing. We stay with her. We drink wine and talk for hours, she’s such a good friend. The kids love going there, seeing all the cousins.”

She loves the friendliness of the town. “I’d be walking along and people will call out, ‘Howya Dawn?’

Chris recently opened the Boyle Arts Fair, it was an incredible night, really emotional. There’s a feeling that the town is incredibly proud of Chris.

Family is central to O’Porter. Born in Scotland in 1979, her parents divorced when she was one, and she went to live on Guernsey with her mother and sister. Her mother died of breast cancer when Dawn was six, like Madonna.

“I do compare myself to Madonna a lot,” she hoots. Her social media name, Hot Patooties, comes from the Meatloaf track in the Rocky Horror Picture Show: “On my mum and dad’s first date, he took her to watch the opening night of the Rocky Horror. I love it. My dog’s called Meatloaf.”

Being a motherless daughter left her with a sense of urgency which only dissipated once she’d past the age of 36 herself, the age her mother died. 

“What [her death] ultimately did was give me a ticking clock, a feeling of running out of time,” she says. “I’m now almost ten years older than she was when she died, and I understand that I’m not her, that I am probably going to live a long healthy life, but until the age of 36, there was a part of me that presumed [premature death] would be my trajectory too. I had my first baby two days after I turned 36. In many ways, my life began at that age. Her death gave me an unbelievable drive for success, for love, for friendship – it made me very motivated.”

O’Porter is massively involved with Choose Love, the charity she helped set up in 2015, formerly known as Help Refugees. What began with herself and a handful of friends wanting to help displaced people stuck in the Calais Jungle by sending over a lorry load of donated tents, blankets, and clothes has grown into an international grassroots NGO run by her friend Josie Naughton. To date, they’ve raised over £100million, which goes straight to where it’s needed.

As Choose Love’s “mouthpiece” — she’s their fundraiser — it’s an “ongoing, relentless mission” where “I put on events, I ask well-known people to do things for us. I put on comedy nights, music gigs, a festival.” 

Chris O'Dowd and Dawn O'Porter attend a Choose Love launch. Pcture: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Choose Love

She says no matter how much money they raise, it’s never enough. Her empathy for displaced people is palpable, particularly as the narrative around refugees has hardened to hostility in recent years.

“We all have our individual charities and causes that we care about,” she says. “And not everyone can give time or money, but if everyone gave some love and stopped the hate and viciousness and paranoia that ‘they’re coming here to take our things’, compassion would change the situation drastically. There’s a lot of negative news and media coverage towards the refugee crisis, which is ongoing and ever increasing and is not going to go away. When you work for an organisation like Choose Love, you can’t turn your back on it.

“The migration of people has always, and will always, happen, and right now it’s unprecedented. If we don’t all acknowledge it, and ask ourselves how can we help, it will become worse; we have got to ensure the people living in camps have clean water, sanitation, that the kids are looked after, that there’s women’s health support. I don’t see that we have a choice here.

“People’s decision to flee their home, go on a treacherous journey, put their kids in danger, live in a tent in a camp because that is better than the dangers they were living in…” she pauses. “They’re not doing this because they want to, they’re doing it because they have to. And on a human level, the best we can do is provide them with what they need.

“My area isn’t political, it isn’t whether people are granted asylum or not, it’s purely humanitarian. That the women and children are safe, that they have food, clothes, shoes, wood for the fire in winter. We need to look after each other, be kind to each other.”

Dawn O'Porter: We need to look after each other, be kind to each other. Picture: Toby Madden.

O’Porter feels strongly about kindness. One of the many Choose Love fundraising ventures she’s involved with is Flackstock, the festival which began as a one-off in 2022 to honour her close friend Caroline Flack, the former presenter of Love Island who killed herself in 2020.

“I believe that if the world was a kinder place, Caroline would still be alive,” she says flatly. “It’s really important to say that. I believe she was pushed [to suicide] by a cruel media and social media, which is a very painful thing to accept.

“I remember at the time, along with crippling grief, just being so angry. My anger has dissipated, but I’m very wary of the media now, and there are certain outlets I won’t talk to. When I see a media pile-on, I just back away. I want nothing to do with it. If you choose to add to the hamster wheel [of social media pile-ons], you’re ruining someone’s life. Maybe you think they deserve it, but mostly they don’t. People need to understand the power they have at their fingertips.

“You might think, ‘I’ve got four followers on Instagram, nobody cares what I say,’ but I’m telling you now, if you say something horrible about a celebrity in distress, they will see it.

“Just imagine writing something horrible about someone on the internet, and that person really actually seeing it, and what it might do to them.” 

This is what happened to Caroline Flack.

Flackstock, now an annual event, raises money not just for Choose Love, but for mental health and suicide charities.

Caroline Flack was a close friend of Dawn O'Porter. Picture: Matt Crossick/PA Wire

O’Porter misses her friend deeply. “Sometimes just walking down the street, I remember how funny she was, how full of life, how she was the funniest person I knew,” she says.

“To think of her life being viewed as a tragedy is almost the biggest tragedy of the whole thing. And so a group of us got together and put on Flackstock in her honour — it started off as a what-the-fuck-are-we-doing and is now a legit festival.

“It reminds everyone that when someone dies by suicide, that actually doesn’t define their life. Suicide doesn’t define Caroline, it doesn’t define her life — it’s how her life ended, but she was one of the most effervescent, joyous, fun, funny people. Flackstock has given us a chance to remember the joy.”

She pauses again, adding, “I’m not angry any more – I’m just gutted.”

She quit social media after Caroline died and never went back. These days, having previously been “so consumed [by it] I felt like my Instagram life was my real life”, she uses the platform solely as a promotional tool for work.

“It’s really fun when I use it that way, and the rest of the time I just crack on with the real world.” 

With being Dawn O’Porter, writer of books, lover of cats, raiser of funds and sons, and part of a big Roscommon family.

And with that, having graciously admired each other’s hair, she’s off to crack on with whatever is next.