Katy Wix: Yeah, exactly. And I think that those numbered fragments made sense because I felt like I was outside of normal time. It’s such a cliche, especially when someone dies, to say that time stops, and I don’t think it did stop, exactly, but it changed. I felt outside of other people’s time. Their lives were just carrying on and that becomes an outrageous idea when you’re grieving. It’s possible that schedule conflicts have prevented Katy from returning to Ghosts for future series. Morris, Mary (18 June 2021). "Lemon Drizzle: A life told in cake-related moments". The Times Literary Supplement . Retrieved 21 February 2023. Ultimately, it has strengthened my love for him. He hasn’t taken the friendship with him. I still care about him and I know exactly what he would think about himself dying and me being left behind, with all my half of our private jokes. I’ve absorbed his traits. I eat the foods he liked and use words he liked and say our jokes to myself. And I’ve come up with some new ones for us, too. I’m living for both of us. I have replaced this person with love. And I get to write this love letter to him.

She struggled with always keeping silent and finally found her peace by helping Mary find her voice. Five years on, I understand more about what happened to my friend. I understand he was trying to protect himself from pain. I didn’t understand it when I was younger. It’s difficult when you are young and you come face-to-face with addiction. We all drank a lot, so it was difficult to detect. It was a slow build, like one long note, getting louder and louder. As teenagers, we’d spend afternoons sitting in his purple bedsit in Cardiff, sipping cheap rum and Coke, breathing in sharply as it stung the roof of our mouths and then we’d laugh and try to act sober on the phone if a parent called. Later, his drinking got worse, but I was too embarrassed to mention it. I saw it as a phase. I was waiting for the plot twist, where he suddenly reveals he had a plan all along, that the drinking was a way into something else, and a new, reformed person would emerge on the other side of the destruction. But it was just more of the same. And then it got worse. Comic actor Katy Wix’s hilarious, heartbreaking memoir is made up of 21 defining, variously devastating vignettes in which cakes – “weird, camp objects” – pop up in supporting roles. There’s the rose-covered royal icing on the cake that made her realise comedy was her calling, the bara brith she eats in hospital after a life-altering car crash, the homemade madeira cake that someone brings along to a grief therapy group. She’s a writer with an impressive range, and while the switches occasionally feel hectic, Delicacy is entertaining and affecting, filled with satisfying observations about body image, grief and memory. Also, you know in the 90s, late at night you’d get some weird, bizarre performance art happening on BBC Two? I miss that. The sort of stuff that was on after The Word. And then finally, maybe just all of Peep Showagain? We started to go on small walks. Dad asked me to forgive him’: Katy Wix. Photograph: Kristina Varaksina/The ObserverBrilliantly original, funny and insightful. Dry and comic, but also very moving. I absolutely loved Delicacy‘ – Katy Brand

The language of pain isn’t helpful. The placement of pain, on a scale from one to ten, relies on having been in pain before. Caragh Medlicott: I always think that prose poetry is closer to the reality of how we experience emotions anyway. We sort of impose a narrative after the fact. Katy Wix: Yeah, it was so different. But actually, the loneliness I really revelled in because I’m so used to writing in collaboration with other people and I think — because I’ve mostly written for TV and radio — you go through so many other people’s notes, and then there’s often a kind of gatekeeper at the top, so it was liberating to have none of that. As soon as I realised my editor was really supportive and happy to go with my more experimental ideas, I relished that creative freedom. If you compare it to TV writing, it was like I was the director, the producer, the writer and the costume department all in one.

Katy Wix: Yeah, certainly. I think getting a bit older helps. And I guess realising that, actually, what often happens when you tell someone the truth of how you’re feeling, or something you feel is shameful, is that they react in a totally fine way. They say, “that’s fine — I still like you”. But it’s taken a long time. I still find subtle ways to avoid being vulnerable even now, and I catch myself doing it, and it’s interesting noticing when it happens. I still think like, if you watch someone being very open and raw in a stand-up show, I think that’s so brave, because with the book it’s still a one-sided conversation. I was able to control the level of vulnerability. Katy Wix: You know, we recently recorded the audiobook and when we got to that bit it was really weird. I hadn’t even thought about that chapter and how I was going to convey it — I was like: Am I going to change my voice? Am I going to whisper? It sounds a bit like a pantomime. It works on the paper but reading it aloud it got a bit complicated. From Delicacy: The Interviews YouTube series

I paused my never-ending projects of self-improvement (get Michelle Obama arms, read Middlemarch, give up Diet Coke). I couldn’t improve in any way or be productive. I could just survive. When getting out of bed was difficult, I broke things down into threes, to make them manageable: 1) push duvet off; 2) put feet on floor; 3) stand. This was the most I had ever done for my emotional wellbeing and I have my friend to thank for that. When you are the one hurting yourself, you are never safe. It was nice to start to feel safe in my own company again. Katy sees the world like no one else and deciphers it with extraordinary beauty. Delicacy took my breath away' - Lolly Adefope Gentle, heartbreaking, laugh out loud funny and poetically told –an intimate memoir that stays with you’ Brimming with graceful, charming writing – this book perfectly encapsulates so many moments we face as girls and women and I only wish I’d read it sooner’– Kiri Pritchard-McLean In just under two years, writer and actor Katy Wix lost her best friend and both her parents in a devastatingly short amount of time. This heartbreaking experience became formative in the writing of her acclaimed memoir, Delicacy . Recounting Wix’s experience growing up in Cardiff, the incubation of body image issues, as well as the aftermath of her profound bereavement, Delicacy provides a deep-dive into grief and emotional vulnerability. Caragh Medlicott caught up with Katy over Zoom to discuss writing, grief and diet culture.I have often wondered if the last book you read is important. I remember the last book I read to my dad [....] The last book you read before you die is like the type of coin that gets put under your tongue for Charon. It is mental substance for your journey, something to remember as you go on your way" (p.206). In Delicacy’s first story, Wix remembers being reluctantly coaxed into cycling while on a family holiday in France, aged eleven. Explaining her discomfort, Wix writes: Bird Island – Radio 4 Sitcom". British Comedy Guide. Archived from the original on 20 September 2017 . Retrieved 19 July 2017. Caragh Medlicott: I watched the YouTube interviews you did to go along with the book and heard you say that reading other people’s memoirs sometimes jogged your own memory, and that reading other people’s stories in general was more enriching than self-help books. It made me think of a quote from Kazuo Ishiguro: “In the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. […] Does it feel this way to you?” — I wondered, how much did you think about the reader when you were writing? Was there anything you hoped people would take from it?

I liked the premise of the book, linking cake with significant life events, but she should have leaned into it more. She should have been stricter about it. Katy sees the world like no one else and deciphers it with extraordinary beauty. Delicacy took my breath away’– Lolly Adefope It’s a feeling that’ll be familiar to anyone who was labelled sensitive or shy in childhood. The idea that, contrary to notions of child-like freedom and frivolity, by eleven years old Wix had already developed an acute sense of self-awareness, of her perception in the outside world, and the inhibiting perfectionism that so often accompanies that recognition. This incident culminates in Wix riding directly into traffic as a “punishment to all who had allowed the cycling to happen”. Yet, this is not the pivotal experience of this particular holiday. Instead, it is the one for which the chapter is named – ‘The First Cake’ – an event which is preceded by Wix’s statement that: “My mother’s hopes for me were that I would always be happy and thin. My hope for her was that she would never leave me.” In happening to stumble upon a delicious cake in a French cafe with her mother, Wix encounters a formative experience – one that ultimately permeates the entirety of Delicacy: While studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Wix entered the Funny Women competition. She met comedian Anna Crilly in the competition and they later performed as a double act.She played Phoebe in Tom Basden's stage comedy Party and its subsequent three series spin-off on BBC Radio 4 also called Party. Wix wrote and co-starred in the same station's comedy series Bird Island, which also featured Reece Shearsmith, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Alison Steadman. Mary left the rest of the Ghosts in episode four… (Credit: BBC) Why did Mary – actress Katy Wix – leave Ghosts?