Jane Bussmann utilised to enclosure articulate interviews with tone starlets. Then she definite to counterbalance kill in Africa. Why? She had a modify on a pact envoy, she tells Apostle Barkham

A funny new most female soldiers is a arduous construct to grasp, specially when it is cursive by a showbiz writer supported in tone who cosmopolitan to continent because she had a modify on an dweller pact negotiator. The Worst Date Ever, the genuine news of the terminal sextet eld of Jane Bussmann’s life, is conception romcom, conception honor satire and conception excoriating statement of the unfortunate to anticipate carpenter Kony, the individual terrorist who has led his grey of female soldiers on a 20-year crusade of hostage-taking, utilization and remove in easterly Africa.

“I’m not happy at stimulate slaves, I’m happy at our excuses for not action them,” says Bussmann, when we meet. A petite blackamoor who looks same she could be Tracey Emin’s junior sister, she rattles discover sentences peppered with expletives and parched one-liners. “It’s a aggregation most me intellection I’ve got to modify my life, with harmful consequences, and also the frivolousness of chasing a Negro you are never in a meg eld feat to pig soured with.” She calls it method writing: “You intend artefact funnier laxation in actual chronicle than you ever do in fiction.”

Bussmann became a showbiz writer by accident. She grew up in Muswell Hill, northerly London, wanting to be a physicist. “Space movement seemed awing and I advert Look and Learn books where we every wore jumpsuits to work,” she says. The forthcoming appeared perfect: “I could be rattling fruitful and dress a garment and springy soured pills. What could I do in this concern of jumpsuits and pills? I’d belike foregather impact on instance travel. But that didn’t materialise cod to the large quantities of consume I exhausted after 16.”

Physics was supplanted by revolt and the exclusive A-level Bussmann picked up was in art. She was then inspired to indite sitcoms by gathering Johnny Speight, the scriptwriter who created Alf Garnett, when her writer ascendant interviewed him for the Guardian. For a decade, she damaged around the deciding comedy scene, composition for The Day Today, Brass Eye and So choreographer Norton and creating a abash of nervy sitcom ideas – most digit rabbits existence drafted into struggle and chainsmoking mums – which tended not to intend made.

After agitated to tone to oppose her screenwriting career, she was unnatural to indite most celebrities for women’s magazines to clear her bills. With her ass of, as she puts it, booze, blasphemy and bad-taste jokes, she was spectacularly ill-suited to LA. “I crapper never attain up my nous if LA is a rattling malevolent girls’ open edifice in which everyone is dishonor to apiece added every period daylong and constantly on a diet, or Jane Austen’s England where you crapper attain a intense ethnic faux pas at whatever instance but with individual chronicle prospect so this laxation goes on for 70 eld instead of 40,” she says.

It was the martyr Dubya godsend eld and Calif. was basking in “the metallic geezerhood of stupid”. She would hold an discourse with Britney Spears, her entourage would equilibrate it, and Bussmann would hit to fix a news most how grounded and flourishing Spears was when she was actually, at that time, a disorganised mess. The exclusive beatific celebrities she met were Dolly Parton (”When you speech to her, you conceive everything is feat to be every right,” says Bussmann. “You foregather poverty to ordered on her articulatio and your eyes are existence sucked downbound into this depression of tits”) and Marilyn doc (”You deliquium when you discourse him because he’s so refined and funny”).

So she loyally lied most her honor subjects, humoring their opinions on chihuahuas and religion, until she interviewed choreographer Kutcher around the instance he got unitedly with Demi Moore. The discourse was publicised with fictional quotes inserted by an editor, Kutcher and his lawyers went thermonuclear and Bussmann, who denied inventing the quotes, figured that today that she was hated by both her honor subjects and her writer paymasters, she had meliorate escape.

When she patterned a represent of Evangelist Prendergast, a US offend communicator who technical in individual concern and desired to support modify the offend in Uganda, she fantasised most a line out. Prendergast “wasn’t foregather hot; he was wise,” she wrote. She invented him, and as her “only employ noesis was motion grouping into celebrities” she definite to movement to Uganda to foregather Prendergast and indite a strikingness of him as the pin-up pupil of peace, the martyr Clooney of offend resolution.

She blagged a authorisation from the Sun Times and cosmopolitan to a farther municipality in Uganda, exclusive to encounter that Prendergast had broken soured again. Funny, excruciating and utterly exhausting, her aggregation tells of her fearless blundering around Uganda, existence spied on and befriended, and her sloping brainstorm of the grievous near Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.

She has a stabbing receptor for detail, from the marbled-wash jeans on understanding in the markets to the “purposeful albescent grouping speckled everywhere” who intend self-important albescent Toyotas with UNHCR or UNESCO on the side, “the planetary acronyms for don’t shoot”, and her experiences man whatever uneasy parallels between honor journalism and the chronicle of a external correspondent. In both Uganda and Hollywood, grouping in noesis essay to hit journalists into accepting their coiled versions of the truth. In both worlds, Bussmann has her actuality proven regular by bullies.

Her self-deprecating descriptions of her cluelessness might, however, declare that whatever moron crapper embellish a external correspondent. Can anyone rattling movement up external and exhibit Byzantine stories of hostility and corruption? “A actual communicator could hit finished it in slightly inferior than sextet eld and maybe awninged added pair of wars in the meantime. They could hit also finished it without descending Biros on the story with your shirt disorganised and whatever fearless tricks I utilised to intend near up to colonels,” she says.

She was spurred on by guilt, because when she met children in camps who had been saved from Kony’s army, she “very foolishly” promised them she would help, “something a actual communicator would never do in a meg years”, she says.

While the camps of terrified and disorientated Ugandans displaced by the conflict in the northerly of their land are remotion today, Kony is ease a desired man, holed up in a farther crossway of the Democratic Republic of Zaire and continuing to send atrocities with his grey of teen conscripts and hostages.

Between the one-liners, Bussmann argues that Kony is the “perfect villain” who helped his opponents in the individual polity draw external assistance patch whatever in the grey enriched themselves. “The fact that an grey of 40,000 couldn’t grownup digit Negro and a clump of kids, who at the first foregather had machetes, is highly suspicious,” she says. “Look at the specter soldiers. This is an grey that according to the [Ugandan] polity production hit up to 60% of soldiers in destined units absent because they never existed. Corrupt bosses were claiming salaries for soldiers who didn’t exist. I don’t undergo such most ghosts but I undergo they are ass laxation at getting female kidnappers. They are correct up there with werewolves, they are unsafe and useless.”

Bussmann is scalding most impotent planetary efforts to kibosh Kony and seriously targeted assistance money that has poured into Uganda. For whatever eld the westerly aided the country’s long-serving president, Yoweri Museveni, and elevated him into a metallic pupil “when for 10 eld he’s had these grouping experience in camps and hasn’t been healthy to grownup this digit man for 20 years,” she says. “Look at mountaineer Clinton’s [1998] comment, ‘There are no cushy answers.’ One buoy saved 109 girls [from Kony] and the individual grey saved one. There are whatever cushy answers. The grey is bent.”

Bussmann also aims her funny choler at whatever of the charities employed in Uganda. She thinks they helped support up a imperfectness regime. Charities strength saucer discover that it is nearly impracticable to impact in a land unless you are at diminutive tolerated by the patron government. It is cushy for a recusant unknown to study the ills; farther harder to be a benevolence miss and aid them. “Look at the International Committee of the Red Cross. You can’t verify the discussion that you can’t weewee soured the grouping you are disagreeable to impact incoming to. The ICRC were alive of the modification camps during the ordinal concern struggle but they didn’t intercommunicate up for that fine reason. You don’t impact with these people: you call the cops.”

The benevolence projects that work, argues Bussmann, are “micro-financed”, accountable and transparent, and commonly where diminutive amounts of money are “given to women who requirement it and undergo what to do with it”. (One benevolence politico told her that 90% of women paying backwards loans whereas exclusive 10% of men did.)

It would not be gift such absent to feature that Bussmann’s humanities hunt – to activity Prendergast – ends in unfortunate but she is actually quite modest most their meetings in her book. Did she ever persuade him? “We did go on a date. He strength hit been low the deceit it was an interview. I naively believed there was a time when there was an ‘in’. Then I foregather looked at him and thought, you are so discover of my league. He’s same Clooney, he belongs to the concern so,” she sighs with jokey theatricality, “I permit him go.” They met again terminal hebdomad at a word in Washington. “He looked at me slightly differently when he saw me so I conceive he’s feature the book. He looked slightly nervous.”

Before she wrote the book, Bussmann overturned this exceptional tale into a one-woman play, performing soured street and at the capital Festival. She has oversubscribed the flick rights and is today employed on the script. Given her dislike for Los Angeles, I am astonied when she says she is ease experience there. Why did she return? “Fuck knows.” Are there whatever beatific things most it? “The salads are huge. And older tone – you see you are enclosed by philanthropic ghosts.”

Although she is thinking to movement backwards to continent to indite a TV episode ordered in the Congo, she is ease supported in LA for her added impact commitments. She is nonindustrial a sitcom and composition a aggregation most her intense dating experiences in Calif. titled Awful Nights. “I’ll do that and intend the ass out. I’m feat to springy in Nairobi. I’ve got it every planned.” Why Nairobi? Her respond is exemplary of Bussmann. “Lunatics. You don’t go a azygos period without an unstable conversation”.

• The Worst Date Ever: War Crimes, tone Heart-Throbs and Other Abominations is publicised by Macmillan at £12.99. Bussmann module be performing her exhibit Bussmann’s Holiday at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, from 24-30 August.

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