Author Kathy Lette will give the keynote address at the Festival of Ideas in Melbourne. Source: AAP
AUTHOR Kathy Lette has no shortage of funny stories about her son, Julius.
There's the occasion when he asked about her apparent facial hair when she was in the middle of a dinner with Hugh Jackman.
Then there's the time 12-year-old Julius met Tony Blair at Downing Street.
"I said, 'Oh Jules, this is the Prime Minister, Tony Blair' and my son said, 'You're the one my mother calls Tony Blah Blah'.
"You just think, let me die now.
"You have to strap a shock absorber to your brain so you're not continuously mortified."
Lette is best known as the co-author of the novel, Puberty Blues, which was adapted into a television series, airing in 2012. A second series is now in production.
Julius inspired Lette's latest book, The Boy Who Fell To Earth, which is being made into a film by Emily Mortimer.
She says raising a child on the autism spectrum like Julius can be heartbreaking, but also hysterically and accidentally funny.
"They're so candid, they say whatever they are thinking at any time.
"It's almost like they have taken a truth serum.
"Truth is quite a rare commodity these days."
Lette will be in Melbourne this week to discuss not only the obstacles special needs children and their families face, but also how people with autism can contribute to society in the most positive and fascinating ways.
Diagnostic hindsight suggests Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were probably on the autism spectrum, Lette says.
Julius is now 22 and living in his own flat while studying acting at university, but Lette says raising him taught her what really matters in life.
"He has made me a better person in many ways because it does teach you not to be judgmental and it does teach you to be compassionate," she says.
"And also to take joy from little things, little achievements, not always be thinking about all the things you haven't got and you haven't done.
"When he got a girlfriend a few months ago, to me, that was better than winning the Nobel Prize for Literature to see him so happy."
Another of Lette's books, To Love, Honour and Betray, is being made into a BBC series set in Cronulla, NSW, she says.
Now, much to the horror of her human rights barrister husband Geoffrey Robertson, Lette is casting her satirical eyes over the legal profession.
"I think he wants to lock me away in maximum security prison so I don't send up his world but it's ripe for satire," she says.
* Kathy Lette will give the keynote address at the Festival of Ideas on October 4 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
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