Interview with Sue Townsend

Big interview Photo: Pictures Weekes/Writer © Andy nb 22 Big interview Sue Townsend – republican revelries Zoë Fairbairns discusses Sue Townsend’s latest monarchic – or, more accurately, anarchic – novel with the author first met Sue Townsend back in the 1980s, at a education,’ she explains. ‘My parents and my party hosted by Methuen who were then her aunties and uncles all passed what was called the Ipublishers, and mine. Methuen had just been scholarship, but none of them went on to taken over, and the new owners wanted to de- grammar school because they couldn’t afford the recognise the staff union. The whiff of industrial uniform. And that was the same reason that was struggle was in the air and, in solidarity with our given as to why I didn’t go on. The family editors, Sue and I and other Methuen authors tradition was that you left school at the earliest wore union badges and argued the case for union legal opportunity, and you went to earn money.’ recognition with senior executives. It was all She became a petrol pump attendant. The duffel reasonably polite, but you could see them eyeing coat she wore with its BP logo had a pocket large her nervously; as creator of the hugely successful enough to contain a paperback book, so in 3 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 /4, and between running out to the pumps, she sat in her The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, she was their kiosk on the forecourt and read – Russian bestselling author. novelists, American bestsellers, anything. More than 20 years later, we reminisce about Off-duty, she lived the life of a ’60s beatnik – this episode as she welcomes me into her one of about ten, she reckons, in Leicester at the spacious, 100-year-old house in Leicester. She is in time. ‘We used to meet up in this coffee bar and her early sixties, blonde-haired, wearing slinky talk about jazz and folk and French culture, no velvet pants and a black and white stripy top. En doubt sounding completely pretentious. route to her sitting room, my eye is caught by a Leicester’s only coffee bar was kept by a Jewish painted wooden rocking horse in the hall, and a guy called Joe. And he read The Guardian, the framed photograph of Antony Gormley’s Angel of Manchester Guardian then. After reading it, he the North. The sitting room itself is dominated by would pass it around the coffee bar, and I used to a pair of wooden giraffes – not life-size, but large. think, oh my God, one day I’ll read this and ‘I love giraffes, so my husband gave them to me understand it.” for Christmas,’ Sue explains, before calmly adding that one of the creatures recently toppled over on Writing to a visitor. She assures me that no injuries were She started writing secretly. ‘I used to write semi- I used to think, caused, but when she asks me where I would like autobiographical stuff. And because of the to sit, I select a chair on the far side of the room. explosive, I thought, nature of it, I got into the oh my God, habit of hiding it.’ She hid it for 20 years, during one day “ Beatnik which time she married (at the age of 18, wearing Sue Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946, and a navy blue suit by Norman Hartnell) and had “I’ll read The left school at the age of 14, despite her English three children. Then she met Colin Broadway, who Guardian,and teacher pleading with her parents that she be was to become her second husband. He showed allowed to stay on. ‘It wasn’t in our family’s her an advertisement in the Leicester Mercury for a understand it. experience to have anyone go on to further writers’ group that was meeting at the Phoenix 23 nb Big interview theatre. ‘I went there for six weeks without Pains of Adrian Mole, he notes casually that ‘my opening my mouth. I hadn’t realised it was a play- mother has gone with her women’s group to have writing group, and I had nothing to show. After a picnic on Greenham Common’. In the more six weeks, the director said to me, “it would be recent Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass good if you could bring us something of yours”, Destruction, Mole, now in his late 30s, cancels his because by then everyone had brought holiday in Cyprus for fear that the WMDs might something. So I wrote my first play in two weeks. put him at risk. Later he writes to Tony Blair It was called Womberang. It was a kind of wish- demanding evidence that the weapons (a) exist, fulfilment play, because I’d spent a lot of time in and (b) could reach Cyprus; without this his travel gynaecological waiting rooms, and I wrote about agent will not refund his £57.10 deposit. Anyone what I wished would happen.’ Womberang was who has ever responded to an international performed at London’s Soho Poly in 1979. disaster by wondering, ‘How will this affect me?’ Three years later, in 1982, The Secret Diary of can find points of identification with Adrian, as 3 Adrian Mole Aged 13 /4 was published – her first can anyone who has unfulfilled ambitions or book. Besides being a huge bestseller, a triumph unrealised ideals, or who has ever loved and lost. on radio, a begetter of several sequels and a TV Since this covers just about all of us, it accounts series, it earned for Townsend the distinction for the books’ popularity. shared by only a handful of authors (such as Sir As well as seven Adrian Mole books, Townsend Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, and more has written two other novels, and three political recently Helen Fielding) of having created a satires, firing broadsides against New Labour character whose name has entered the English and the royal family. The latest of these, Queen language. Camilla, was published in paperback on Mole’s account of life as a 1980s’ October 5. comprehensive school student is matter-of-fact, low key, self-absorbed. Everything is about him. Queen Camilla His frequent unawareness of the wider The title is a challenge: a wind-up for those who significance of what he writes, makes it all the don’t relish the idea of Camilla becoming queen, more significant to the reader. In The Growing as well as those who are averse to queens and Photo © Andy Weekes/Writer Pictures Weekes/Writer © Andy Photo nb 24 Big interview kings in general. The book opens where its wouldn’t ever meet them. I’ve been invited a few predecessor The Queen and I (first published in times. I wouldn’t want to. I really think it’s bad Some of the 1992) finished: the English monarchy has been for writers to rub shoulders with politicians and wisest people overthrown. It is just England we are talking royalty. I wouldn’t be able to write about them.’ about, which seems odd, particularly in I’ve ever heard statements like ‘England owed the United States a Layabout “have been callers hundred billion pounds’. Granted that the book is Or perhaps she might write about them a comedy, its subject matter is a major change to differently. The distance she keeps from the real to a radio the British constitution; don’t we need to know royals sets limits on how acute she can be when station, who where the non-English parts of the British Isles fit fictionalising them. There’s none of the intimacy “ in? Townsend explains that in her imagined or irony that come from reading Mole’s diaries: in wouldn’t have scenario, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland Queen Camilla, where almost everyone has a point thought of have become independent and gone their of view, none of those points of view is developed separate ways. She prefers not to examine this or intensified. An omniscient, uninvolved narrator themselves as development, or even refer to it in the book, offers generalised observations such as: ‘England being clever. because it might distract her from her main was an unhappy land… To make themselves feel theme, which is what has happened to the better, people spent their money on things that members of the formerly-royal family. diverted and amused them. There was always We find them living in an exclusion zone on a something that they thought they must have to run-down council housing estate, tagged like make them happy. But when they had bought the criminals, watched over by surveillance satellites, object of their desire, they found, to their washing their own dishes in plastic bowls from profound disappointment, that the object was no the Everything A Pound shop. In spite of all this, longer desirable.’ (‘It’s God,’ Townsend explains, when steps are taken to restore the royals to their when I ask who is the source of this erstwhile palaces, power and privilege, they don’t editorialising. What, the god worshipped by all want to go. religious people? ‘No,’ says Townsend. ‘The god of So why does the staunchly left-wing and writing.’) republican Sue Townsend keep writing about the Townsend’s jokes at the expense of Prince royals? Charles’s jug ears and convoluted sentences are ‘It’s wish-fulfilment,’ she admits. ‘I’ve always predictable; and although it’s funny that she liked the story about the prince and the pauper.

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