socialmedian: 'I didn't know what Adrian Mole looked like – well, not until I saw John Major on the telly'

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'I didn't know what Adrian Mole looked like – well, not until I saw John Major on the telly'

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

Alex Clark interviews Sue Townsend

It is hardly acute literary criticism to say that Sue Townsend really knows how to hit the nail on the head, but that she does so with such apparent effortlessness and consistency is surely worth remarking. Witness a poignant little diary entry from Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years, which covers the period from mid-2007 to mid-2008. Adrian, nearing 40, recently diagnosed with prostate cancer (the misspelling in the book's title is deliberate, and people's inability to get it right is a source of much irritation to Adrian) and living in a converted pigsty with his dangerously dissatisfied wife, Daisy, is in need of cheering up. "For some reason," he writes, "I always feel comforted when I am in Woolworths. When I was a child, I spent my first pocket money there. I was five years old and forked out twenty pence on flying saucers. It is good to know that whatever travails we may suffer in life, Woolworths will always be there."

Adrian made his first print appearance in 1982, in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, which foll

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