Exotic Hotel author Deborah Moggach's 'racy" passion In the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, characters enjoy romances at their retirement home in India. Off screen, Deborah Moggach, on whose novel the box-office hit is based, has embarked on her own passionate liason. The 63-year-old author of Tulip Fever is courting Mark Williams, a writer, who has what Moggach's son, Tom, describes as "a racy past." Moggach tells me: "We're very happy." Williams accompanied Moggach to India on a visit to the set of the film, which stars Dame Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Dame Maggie Smith. "He was taking photographs," she says. The 36-year-old teacher adds, intriguingly: "He's had a racy past, that's for sure, so maybe this time she's met her match." Moggach is reluctant to provide further details. "I'm always running my mouth off and getting myself in trouble, so I'm trying to do it less," she says. All I'll say is, people who grew up in the Sixties all had a raunchy past, didn't they? Her companion for 10 years was Mel Calman, the much-loved cartoonist, who died of a heart attack in 1994 while watching Carlito's Way with Moggach at the Empire Leicester Square.