Seven things you didn't know about me: The latest Facebook fad

Friends on Facebook are invited to reveal facts about their lives that their online acquaintances have never heard. And writers have been only too happy to oblige.

Bonnie Greer: "I planned to become a nun" (Getty)

Bonnie Greer

Bonnie Greer is a playwright, novelist, librettist and critic. She is also the Chancellor of Kingston University in Surrey.

1 I’m a direct descendant of a black man who owned slaves.

2 One of my mentors was Norman Mailer. He totally supported my work. I hate it when he’s labelled a misogynist. He wasn’t to me.

3 My true love is theoretical maths and physics. I have no education in them, but I understand as best I can. Reading a book on maths theory (written for lay people, of course) clears my head.

4 I’m a synesthete who hears music all the time. I can tell you what music is running through your head at any given time and/or what music means the most to you. I remember films because of the score. I can also spot liars very quickly. It’s the music.

5 I’m married to a white-English ex-public school boy who loves cricket. He calls baseball “a game for girls”.

6 My late father, the day after D-Day, turned 20. He was in the UK on that birthday, ready to deploy to Normandy. He went all the way, even to a concentration camp. I think it was Dachau. He didn’t tell me more. He became very close to some Jewish guys because of that, and on every one of his birthdays, they’d show up with a Star of David and ask him when he was moving to Israel.

7 I was planning to become a nun until I told my mother, who laughed so hard that I was put off.

Amanda Craig

Amanda Craig is an author, journalist and critic. Her lates novel is Hearts and Minds (Abacus)

1 When I was a baby in South Africa, my parents put me on a rug while having a picnic and a black mamba crawled right over me. I wasn't bitten (obviously) but have a phobia about snakes.

2 I have a rotten memory for dates and names but can remember pretty much every conversation I've ever had.

3 I have an acute sense of smell, which makes me hate almost all perfume, but I have twice smelt something odd on people, begged them to see a doctor and they turned out to have cancer.

4 The first proper author I met was Fay Weldon, when she rented my mother's house in Primrose Hill after leaving her husband. I was about 14.

5 My first boyfriend became an Italian rock star.

6 I wrote my first novel while employed by the Sunday Express and pretending to follow Jeffrey Archer round for six months during the rehearsal of his first play. The day came when I had to write 4,000 words about it, and of course I'd only been to two rehearsals and a very fancy hotel in Bath. Then he sued a sister paper for libel... and the story was dropped.

7 I still think animals are people.

Francis Wheen

Francis Wheen is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. A biographer of Marx and of Das Kapital, he is also deputy editor of Private Eye

1 I appeared as an extra in the film Young Winston.

2 In the summer of 1974, I started work in the Guardian newsroom as the editorial assistant, ie, office dogsbody. My desk was near that of the chief investigative reporter, Martin Walker, who adopted me at once. He introduced me to Tom Driberg, whose biography I later wrote. He told me to write for Private Eye. And when he moved to a house in Islington, he invited me to live in his basement. Is it any wonder his nickname is Sweetie?

3 In 1981, Rik Mayall auditioned me to write and perform songs on a comedy LP he'd been commissioned to make. I didn't get the gig.

4 Also that year, I spent the day of the Charles-Diana wedding playing cricket in Regent's Park with several novelists and an armed robber.

5 I get a "special thanks" credit in the film The Ploughman's Lunch. This was mostly for smuggling actors Tim Curry and Charlie Dore (plus a camera crew and director Richard Eyre) into the Conservative party conference of 1982 so they could appear in the same shot as Margaret Thatcher giving her Falklands victory speech.

6 I have a hugely time-wasting addiction to serious cryptic crosswords. Azed, Inquisitor, Mephisto, Enigmatic Variations, Beelzebub, sometimes The Listener. So many lost weekends.

7 In 1993, my partner Julia Jones and I took in a stray piglet that had been found in a nearby lane. Perdita (as we naturally called her) was puppy-sized, but within weeks she was as big as a sofa. We once asked the vet about Perdita's life expectancy. "Dunno," he said. "Not many pigs die of old age." She survived for almost 10 years.

Arabella Weir: "I have not slept with Paul Whitehouse" (Rex)

Arabella Weir

Arabella Weir is an actor and comedian, best known for her roles in The Fast Show, as well as being a best-selling author. Her latest book – her first for children is The Rise and Rise of Tabitha Baird (Piccadilly)

1 I wrote all my own material in The Fast Show – just to be clear.

2 I am "Girl on the undercliff" in the Karel Reisz movie, The French Lieutenant's Woman – a fleeting appearance which required me to be on location in Lyme Regis for more than two months.

3 I have not slept with either Paul Whitehouse or Charlie Higson.

4 My father trained at MECAS, commonly known as the spy school in Lebanon, where he, a plump Scotsman, became known as the Fat Spy. He soon lost weight and later transferred his horror at his moniker on to me.

5 Both my parents were Scottish.

6 I was in a band called Bazooka Joe, whose last ever gig at St Martin's School of Art was supported by a new band, playing their first ever gig, who were booed off during their first song – they were called The Sex Pistols.

7 I didn't go to university and it is the only regret I have in my life.

Kate Saunders

Kate Saunders is a writer and former actor. Last week, she won the Costa Children's Book Award for Five Children on the Western Front (Faber)

1 When I was a child, we had an enormous bathtub that had once belonged to the great (and enormous) actor, Charles Laughton.

2 I once wore a fat suit, while playing a Russian shot-putter in a commercial. It was never shown and let's keep it that way. Most of my acting career belongs in Room 101.

3 Next year, it will be 30 years since I published my first book. This makes me feel incredibly old. How did this happen? When did I turn into one of my parents' farty old chain-smoking friends? The only good part is that young people have started being very kind to me.

4 I hate lemongrass and coriander – these nasty, soapy flavours seem to creep into everything these days. And stop scattering pomegranate seeds. It's just lazy.

5 I can't be bothered to eat vegetables to any great extent, let alone five a day. Unless it's five chips.

6 Margaret Thatcher had to listen to me playing the piano when she visited my primary school, back in her milk-snatching days. She was wearing that blue hat with the big brim.

7 I've never been able to drive a car. Consequently, I can't really tell them apart unless they're in nice bright colours. So it's no use texting that my taxi is a silver Ford Placenta, or whatever.

Damian Barr

Damian Barr is a writer, columnist and playwright. His most recent book, Maggie and Me, is now out in paperback (Bloomsbury)

1 I've never had spaghetti bolognese. Because I am allergic to tomatoes. They don't just make me feel sick, they terrify me. I still have nightmares about that tomato festival in Spain.

2 You want me on your side come the revolution because I am a very good shot.

3 I am colour blind and officially disbarred from military and police force as a result. Shame, that.

4 Twenty years ago, I sledged into my husband.

5 I can't stop myself scratching scars, the ones I can see and the ones I can't.

6 I get furious and sad when tourists catch mackerel and leave them to flap and die on the beach. So much so that I've offered to snap their necks.

7 You'll never be hungry at my house.

John Rentoul

John Rentoul is chief political commentator of the Independent on Sunday. His latest book is Listellany: A Miscellany of Very British Top Tens, from Politics to Pop (Elliott & Thompson)

1 I went to primary school on Iona for a term when I was eight. With my two sisters, we increased the school roll by 50 per cent.

2 I used to clean loos, make beds and peel potatoes on an oil rig in the North Sea. Light plane from Aberdeen to Bergen, Norway; helicopter to rig. Two weeks on, two weeks off. The money wasn't great, but you had only two weeks a month to spend it in.

3 I once described television as a "stupefying medium" as a member of a studio audience of a youth politics show. I wasn't wrong, but I shouldn't have worn my braces outside my jumper.

4 My first job in journalism was as secretary to the editor of Accountancy Age, Robert Bruce. I was the magazine's courier when it turned out the previous secretary was pregnant with twins and went on maternity leave unexpectedly early. I loved answering the phone. "Editor's secretary." "Could I speak to the editor's secretary, please?" "You're speaking to him." "Oh. Could I speak to the editor's secretary, please?"

5 I was a member of CND and went on a march in 1983, but was persuaded by a friend that it made no sense for the UK to give up its weapons while others kept them in the course of one pint at the local pub.

6 I have never owned a car.

7 I have never been to Italy.