The Secret Life of Sue Townsend (Aged 68 3/4)

"Saturday, January the 24th.

"Today was the most terrible day of my life.

"Pandora is going out with Nigel!

"I think I will never get over the shock."

"Sunday, January the 25th, 10am.

"I am ill with all the worry, too weak to write much.

"Nobody has noticed I haven't eaten any breakfast."

"2pm - had two junior aspirins at midday and rallied a bit.

HE SIGHS

"Perhaps when I'm famous, and my diary is discovered,

"people will understand the torment

"of being a 13¾-year-old undiscovered intellectual."

"My thing has got a life of its own.

"It keeps growing and shrinking.

"I can't control it."

Sue Townsend created

one of literature's most unlikely comic heroes.

How do you get inside the head of a 14-year-old boy?

I used a power drill.

Mole was the bestselling book of the entire 1980s. It was huge.

But what's remarkable is that we've heard of Sue Townsend at all.

I was writing secretly from when I was 15, from when I left school.

-A closet writer?

-I was a closet writer for 20 years.

You almost feel like this stuff is pouring out of her,

and she's almost like, "What can I write on next?"

A single mother from a council estate, with no qualifications,

Sue would face poverty, trauma and disability.

It was all stacked against her, really.

So I think the fact she did what she did made it even more phenomenal.

This is Sue's incredible story,

told with help from her friends and family...

She stuck up for people.

That's what her work is.

It's, "I'm standing up for something I believe in."

..brought to life by the community that inspired her...

..and, of course, by Sue herself,

in her own unmistakable voice.

'I'm 45.

'I've had heart trouble.

'I'm diabetic, and I've had four children.

'I've certainly had my whack out of the National Health Service.

'These bags under my eyes

'represent a lifetime of reading until the early hours,

'of midnight feeds, of waiting for teenagers to come home.

'But let's take a closer look.'

At an ordinary school in Leicester,

a girl named Susan Johnstone would grow up to create a modern classic.

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

For over 34 years,

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾

has perfectly captured our awkward teenage years.

"Pandora has got hair the colour of treacle,

"and it's long, like girls' hair should be."

What are his feelings about Pandora?

-He loves her.

-He loves her.

How do we know that he...?

Adrian's anxieties still resonate with teenagers today.

We're all kind of close to 13¾.

When he relates to, like, love,

and he doesn't really know how to portray his emotions, like,

we just start obviously learning about things like that.

OK, this is weird, it's new,

and that's kind of how Adrian feels -

he doesn't know what to feel.

I know where he's coming from, cos, like...

I've been out with quite a few girls!

"Pandora's got the same colour eyes as our dog.

"She's got quite a good figure.

"Her chest is wobbling like mad.

"I feel a bit funny.

"I think this is it."

The diary's frank teenage voice had us all hooked.

But who was the real Adrian Mole?

Adrian Mole and I share the same birthday,

and I think that's one of the...

-clues.

-SHE LAUGHS

I think I'm quite an Adrian Mole character, you see.

I think I am. He's a secret writer.

Erm...

His views are often my views.

Leicester is where I was born, and I expect where I'll die.

Middle England.

Landlocked. Neat, tidy, ordered, respectable.

Its motto is "semper eadem" - always the same.

Quintessentially English.

I wanted to be a writer so much, it was painful,

because I knew I never would be.

It was an impossible thing to want -

hardly admitted it to myself.

You knew that you were either going into the shoe factory

or the boot factory.

Or the sock factory.

And there was no possibility of being anything else.

On her first day of school, Sue made two lifelong friends, Jean and Joan.

-Ooh, lovely.

-There we go.

This is Sue, messing about. She's laddered her tights.

But that's typical of Sue.

When we were 11, we took the eleven-plus,

and we were told at 11 that if you fail this exam,

you won't aspire to anything.

Well, of course, we all of us failed the eleven-plus,

which was why we were at South Wigston.

So the expectations were that we wouldn't have professions,

we would just get married and have lots of babies,

and that was our sort of job in life, so to speak.

Yes, Susan. Go and get your pen.

But the young Sue Johnstone never was one to conform.

She came to the conclusion that, you know,

if there were some lessons that perhaps she didn't like,

she suddenly started to turn up in brightly coloured odd socks.

And, of course, the teachers would send her home to get them changed.

Off she'd trot, and she'd saunter back in at lunchtime,

having missed many lessons.

Usually maths.

Yes, usually maths, that she hated.

And the teachers never caught on to her missing-lessons plan.

-But Sue was so easy to get on with.

-Yeah.

She was so funny as well, wasn't she?

Oh, she was.

I mean, she could turn any situation into something to laugh at.

"I've decided not to take my O levels.

"I'm bound to fail them anyway,

"so why waste all that neurosis on worrying?

"I'll need all the neurosis I can get

"when I start writing for a living."

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

In 1961, at the age of just 14, Sue left school.

-You had a variety of jobs then, didn't you?

-Yes.

After that, when you left school,

-before you became a professional full-time writer.

-Yes.

Worked in a frock shop, didn't you?

Only for a fortnight, yeah.

I was found reading in a cubicle. I was reading Oscar Wilde.

-In a cubicle?

-Yes, so I got the sack, instantly.

Stuck in a series of dead-end jobs, Sue would educate herself...

..through reading.

When I was Adrian Mole's age, I was very pretentious.

Um, excuse me...

Have you got a book called Prejudice Or Pride

by a woman called Jane Austen?

-SHE CHUCKLES

-Yes.

"I could tell she was impressed.

"Perhaps she is an intellectual, like me."

I had no reading plan, I had no guidance.

And so I stumbled onto Dostoevsky,

but I did not know how to pronounce his name.

So I went up to a Bohemian-looking man in a cafe,

and said, "Do you know how to pronounce this?"

And this man very kindly told me how to pronounce it.

And he then recommended other books that I SHOULD read.

In Leicester's coffee shops and jazz cafes,

Sue reinvented herself as a Bohemian teenage intellectual.

She always carried a tin of boot polish.

Cherry Blossom.

The white boots went on.

The Cherry Blossom went on her eyes. Cos she couldn't afford mascara.

She turned herself into this sort of French starlet that she admired.

I modelled myself on Juliette Greco -

the white face, pale lips,

a pound of mascara on each eye.

# Mais toi ma petite Tu marches tout droit

# Vers sque tu vois pas. #

I started writing then, as well.

I started writing autobiographical stuff.

I wanted to make my own world.

I didn't want to live in other people's worlds.

I wanted to make a different life.

At the age of 16, Sue fell in love with a sheet-metal worker

called Keith Townsend.

Like all of us, in that era, she married very young...

..and she had a young family.

I was married to a man who didn't know that I was writing.

And that man was actually literally sitting on my work,

because I used to hide it under the sofa cushions.

But I had no particular voice of my own at that time.

And it took 20 years to find it.

When he left her,

she was absolutely devastated,

and very, very shocked and surprised.

And it was around that time that I think she became quite agoraphobic

and quite ill, really.

I do know that she had a couple of very, very difficult,

unhappy years then and, of course, she was still very young.

With the marriage breaking up,

there was this phrase at the time that it was better for the children.

"Oh, it's much worse if the parents stay together."

Actually, that's not true.

Give that smarmy bugger one for me!

It's the wee boy I feel sorry for.

Let's not fool ourselves into thinking

it's not the most terrible tragedy for children - it is.

I wanted to remind people about that.

In 1969, at the age of just 23,

Sue was a single mother with three kids under five.

She would struggle to make ends meet.

I know what it is like to have that kind of panic about the future.

You're completely living - teetering -

on the very edge the whole time.

"I was too proud to stop passers-by and ask for help.

"I scanned the pavements, looking for money.

"Instead, I found lemonade bottles, Corona brand.

"There was a returnable deposit of 4p on each bottle.

"My oldest son cheered up -

"he knew that these bottles represented hard cash.

"My pride vanished. I looked in litter bins,

"I looked over walls and behind fences."

But through it all, Sue carried on writing.

And in 1975, in this council house,

she hit on the idea that would change her life.

It was one of those Sunday afternoons.

I was sitting with my three children, in a council house.

We had no money.

And my eldest son said to me, "Mum, why don't we go to safari parks,

"like other families do?"

It reminded me of how we gradually begin to examine our parents

very carefully, with that very cold eye of adolescence.

And so, I actually heard my son's voice,

and then I heard a comical version of that voice.

"Bored stiff all day.

"My parents never do anything on Sundays but read the Sunday papers.

"Other families go out to safari parks et cetera, but we never do.

"When I'm a parent,

"I'll fill my children with stimulation at weekends."

Everything flowed from there.

For the next five years, Sue would keep Adrian Mole a secret.

All the while, she was gathering information about his world.

MUSIC: Clever Trevor by Ian Dury and the Blockheads

# Just cos I ain't never had no nothing worth having

# Never ever, never

# Ever

# You ain't got no call not to think I wouldn't fall

# Into thinking that I ain't too

# Clever... #

I took the usual route

of actually going to a playgroup and helping out there,

although it was bedlam.

And one of the workers said that

he thought I'd be quite good as a youth worker.

I was desperate for money!

And I actually did the training and worked for many, many years

in a youth club in the evenings when the children were in bed.

Goldhill Adventure Playground was co-founded by Sue in 1974,

for kids from a deprived council estate in Leicester.

They used to have the swings there, didn't they? Remember the swings?

-The metal frame swings.

-Yeah, the metal frame swings.

-They were the big swings. They went really high.

-Yeah.

-Remember?

-Yeah.

We had nothing.

She'd sit and talk to us, listen to us, read us books.

You know, just all sitting round the campfire.

This were my saviour, without a doubt, you know -

this were my saviour as a kid.

You felt more at ease talking to Sue than your own parents sometimes,

cos you didn't really talk to your parents about things.

Well, I certainly didn't, about growing up,

but you could tell Sue anything.

I think it's more from listening to them,

and knowing how very sentimental they mainly were about their own

families. Most parents won't know this because they don't hear their

children talking frankly to their own age group,

but they're very sentimental about their families.

And they're very conscious of the atmosphere at home,

and they bring it out to the youth club with them, discuss it endlessly.

And so, I really did want to pass on a piece of my knowledge about adolescent boys...

..because I'd always got on extremely well with them.

I found them quite endearing.

Adrian's diary might have stayed secret forever,

if Sue hadn't met Colin Broadway.

Apparently she first saw me when I was walking some geese

across a zebra crossing in Highfields.

And asked a friend of mine

who she was with

and who she was working with, "Who's that strange bloke?"

We met a couple of weeks later.

She said, "I knew when I looked at him, I'm going to marry him."

I said, "Fair enough!"

And she did!

Yeah, Sue and I were together for about four or five years

before I actually realised she was writing

or had any real interest in writing.

I rejected myself for 20 years.

And it was only my second husband

who suggested that I join a writers' group.

So then I started writing plays - I had to write them, for my homework.

So I wrote a play, quite quickly, in a fortnight,

and took it in and they did it.

Womberang.

Womberang was a comedy set in a gynaecological waiting room.

Therapy - that's where they all sit around and tell everyone

in the group what they really think -

REALLY think -

like, say if someone's got dirty teeth, they tell them,

"I think you should clean your teeth."

Awful, isn't it? Or if they've got a bogey in their nose, you tell them.

You tell them all about when you were a kid,

if your husband drives you mad when he's eating.

Things you wouldn't normally tell nobody.

Sue's secret writing was out.

Witty, brutal and honest, it attracted immediate attention.

It won me a Thames Television bursary

and from that I got an agent,

and then you're sort of in the business.

When she got her bursary cheque, which was a thousand quid,

which she was supposed to survive a year on, as soon as it arrived,

she went out the door and gave the dustbin men who were there

a fiver tip!

Just... That's what she was like.

The £1,000 was never going to last a year.

It was, in fact, the BBC, wasn't it,

who first spotted Adrian Mole in 1980?

Yes, it was John Tydeman,

who features in the Mole books but is a real person -

in fact, he's head of BBC Drama now.

"BBC Broadcasting Corporation, the 17th of September.

"Dear Adrian Mole,

"Thank you for your latest letter.

"Undated. You must - if you are going to be a writer,

"and even if you are not - date your letters.

"We file them, of course - the BBC has lots of files.

"Some of the files are very valuable."

When I read it, I thought it was marvellous.

I mean, I fell about with laughter.

I thought it was so wonderful, so funny and so tender, and...

..unusual. You know, a bit of Just William there,

and a bit of a lot of other things.

But it had its own voice.

So I then got in touch with Sue Townsend,

we smoked a lot of cigarettes together and spoke and I said,

"Look, Sue, I really think it has to be done and we're going to do it."

"I have written a poem and it only took me two minutes.

"Even famous poets take longer than that."

The public heard Mole for the first time through a BBC radio play,

broadcast on the 2nd of January 1982.

Back then, he was called Nigel.

"The Tap, by Nigel Mole.

"The tap drips and keeps me awake

"In the morning there will be a lake

"For the want of a washer, the carpet will spoil

"Then for another, my father will toil

"My father could snuff it while he is at work

"Dad, fit a washer Don't be a berk."

It was unbelievable! The listeners who wrote in, or rang up the BBC,

and said, "What is this?" and so on.

I mean, the response was quite, quite extraordinary.

Quickly signed by publishers Methuen,

Sue turned her play into a book.

The University of Leicester library holds Sue's original manuscripts.

Stephen Mangan would one day play the grown-up Mole.

This is her actual handwritten

The Secret Diary of Nigel Mole, Aged 14¾.

Well, even a genius doesn't get it right entirely the first time round,

obviously. Trevor, Clive, Daniel, Melvin, Mervyn, Malcolm, Thomas...

Darius. There's a Steven, I notice.

Steven Mole. Not quite the same, is it?

And then at the end, two Adrians.

Adrian is born.

Here we go - she's off.

Sue never learned to type,

and throughout her career would continue to write by hand.

I mean, it's just page after page, written in all different pens,

on all different types of paper.

You almost feel like she's just... This stuff is pouring out of her,

and she's almost like, "What can I write on next?"

Just passing my birthday -

I have to see what happens to Adrian on my birthday.

"Helped Grandma with the weekend shopping.

"She was dead fierce in the grocer's.

"She watched the scales like a hawk watching a field mouse."

I mean...

You could almost pick any line at random, and it's funny.

"I gave Barry Kent his protection money today.

"I don't see how there can be a God."

-SUE TOWNSEND:

-Well, I had no idea, of course,

that the book was going to sell more than a few copies.

In fact, it sold 20 million,

and was translated into 48 languages.

Mole was the bestselling book of the entire 1980s, you know.

It was huge.

Overnight, the housewife from Leicester became a household name.

It's Sue Townsend! Yes, thank you, Terry!

Now, he has very, very peculiar family.

-Do you think so?

-Mmm.

-You've led a sheltered life!

LAUGHTER

The diary spawned a bestselling sequel, a stage play

and a star-studded TV adaptation.

Do you all think you're going to be Adrian Mole?

-I hope so, yes.

-Definitely, yeah.

I've got a spot.

Just my luck.

Spots on my chin for the first day of the New Year.

# My mother's heart and soul have gone half way up the pole

# My father's on the dole, my friend Bertie's much too old... #

Obviously, what's timeless about Adrian Mole is this picture of

adolescence, which everyone can identify with.

But what's interesting, when you go back and look at it,

is just how detailed the critique is about a specific time,

which was Thatcher's Britain.

And Sue Townsend was quite a political writer, always.

And it's smuggled in in the guise of comedy.

But a lot of it is quite a bleak portrait

of the effect of Thatcherism

on those whom Sue felt it had left behind.

All our kids were growing up in the Thatcher years and were at school,

and were told they had no hope when they leave school,

there's nowhere to go, nothing for them.

They would all be put on the scrapheap.

So there was no hope for Adrian.

What was he going to do when he left school? He had nothing.

"Mrs Thatcher by A Mole.

"Do you weep, Mrs Thatcher? Do you weep?

"Do you wake, Mrs Thatcher, in your sleep?

"Do you weep like a sad willow on your Marks & Spencer's pillow?

"Are your tears molten steel?

"Do you weep?

"Do you wake with three million on your brain?

"Are you sorry that they'll never work again?

"When you're dressing in your blue, do you see the waiting queue?

"Do you weep, Mrs Thatcher, do you weep?

"I think my poem is extremely brilliant.

"It is the sort of poem that could bring the Government to its knees."

I think Adrian Mole is clearly part of a British comic novel tradition

that maybe starts with Diary Of A Nobody

and goes through Evelyn Waugh,

Kingsley Amis and PG Wodehouse, which is about

finding comedy in the banality of everyday life,

suburban life, domestic life.

But the great innovation is that it's not posh,

it's not middle-class life.

I think the British comic novel, generally speaking,

tends to be about the middle classes, and this isn't.

The rhythm of the diary form,

the way some entries are just brilliant jokes,

the sense that you know more than the character does.

I see her influence a lot in things like The Royle Family,

or comedies which show everyday life in a slightly heightened way

and are satirical, but still warm.

And that's a tradition that carries on through another very successful

great comic novel, Bridget Jones.

I'm sure there's a whole generation of comic writers now,

who read it as teenagers and thought,

"Yes, this is the voice that I aspire to."

That unmistakable voice - frank, poignant, but always funny -

made Sue a star.

But in 1983, a year after the success of Adrian Mole,

she was still living in a small terraced house

in the Highfields district of Leicester.

So Giles Gordon was her first agent.

He said, "Are you sitting down, sitting comfortably?"

She said, "Yes."

He said, "You've got a royalty cheque coming for over £1 million."

And it just was literally a cheque that arrived through the door, on the doormat.

# She can do anything she wants to do

# Anything she wants to do, she can do... #

There was never any airs and graces with her.

And yet, when we were at school, she always used to say to me,

"Ooh, you know, if ever I make a lot of money,

"I'm going to live in Stoneygate."

-Cos Stoneygate was the area to be if you made it in Leicester.

-Yeah.

-And that's what she did.

-And that's what she did.

-Yeah.

# Anyone she wants to be, she can be... #

We moved house - that was the big thing.

She got her mother a house, and then various other relations,

then all the kids got houses.

That's where the money went, really. She didn't keep it.

We never had any money.

It was like... It was just... It was used to buy things for people.

I think it's extremely interesting that she didn't move to London.

She stayed in Leicester all of her life.

It was very important to her, as a touchstone,

that she was surrounded

by things she'd known since she grew up.

-She spent hours in that Regency Cafe, didn't she?

-Yeah.

-Just watching people.

-Yeah.

And just watching the world go by and absorbing it all in.

Sue's fascination with the people of Leicester would inspire more than

just the diaries of an awkward adolescent.

In 1984, her observant eye would take her

inside a very different world.

We were walking about Leicester

and we had stopped, I think, to have a coffee,

and opposite us was a factory wall and gate.

And a gaggle of women in saris came through,

laughing and talking amongst themselves.

And that's where the play started.

The Great Celestial Cow is about the Asian community in Leicester.

I lived amongst the Asian community in Leicester for about ten years.

It's about the women,

who were quite mysterious and enigmatic figures to me.

I wanted to know more about them, and it was a way of finding out

more about them and writing about their lives.

For a mainstream writer, this was a brave and unusual move.

So, the Haymarket Theatre was the theatre that my grandma worked in.

And she was devastated when they closed it down.

The Great Celestial Cow is what brought us here,

which is one of the plays that she wrote in 1984,

and we want to bring it back.

Sue's granddaughter Finley is running a workshop,

uniting professional actors and members of the local community.

The thing with my grandma is that everyone she met was interesting.

And it wasn't that whole, "Hi, how are you?"

She genuinely wanted to know about everyone,

and she genuinely wanted to understand them and learn about them.

That's what made her writing so real and so accurate,

because it was observations of real people, but of how she saw them.

Before writing a single word,

Sue, the actors and director Carole approached women from

the Asian community to come in and share their secret lives.

I am 20 years old, Hindu.

I am 5'6" tall, my complexion is good, my skin tone light.

My teeth are perfect.

I have two fillings, gold.

I weigh nine stone when I am naked.

My shoe size is 5½, my pelvis is wide.

Naturally, I will have many sons.

These are actual women who have told these stories to my grandma,

that she wrote. Some of the stories were really moving and really

difficult, and I think that's what spurred them on to do it more.

I have a light, melodious singing voice. I dance gracefully,

and I'm currently working in the gas offices,

where I earn £95 a week before tax.

Oh, and most important of all...

..I am a virgin.

And the actors contributed, too.

Bhasker Patel appeared in the original production,

and the stories he shared with Sue made it onto the stage.

I'm going to England and you're staying here.

'In the opening line, he talks to the cow. That was my life.'

When I'm sitting on the toilet in Leicester...

..you will be here, sitting in your own dirt.

The play follows Sita, a mother of two from India,

who finds that life in Leicester isn't quite what she hoped.

Hey! Get your dirty, black hands off my fruit!

People have got to eat that!

They won't want it if they see you mauling it about, will they?

She doesn't understand.

She understands all right.

They want to stick to their own shops and their own district,

not come into town, stinking the bloody place out.

Someone said to me halfway through, "You do know that that's your mum?"

Go away!

Go on, go away!

What Sue had done, it's my mum's plight.

I think she saw strength in it.

She wanted to tell the world...

..that this is what Asian women go through.

She stuck up for people. That's what her work is.

It's, "I'm standing up for something I believe in,

"but I'm going to do it in the most graceful way possible."

She never stopped fighting for what she believed in.

And that was her way of doing it.

MUSIC: Common As Muck by Ian Dury and the Blockheads

# You're not Brigitte Bardot

# I'm not Jack Palance

# I'm not Shirley Temple by any circumstance

# Or Fred Astaire... #

The class structure as well, isn't it, in British society, appeals to you.

I'm obsessed with it, yes.

I think it's held us all down for too many years.

Throughout all my work, it's there.

And I'd like to see it break down, yeah.

I'd like to live under a different system altogether.

# We're as common as muck

# Bonne chance, viel gluck, good luck

# Where bold is beautiful we don't give a damn

# Love a duck, we're as common as muck... #

One of Sue's best-loved novels would be inspired by a family whose own

secret lives had become a bit too public.

1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.

It has turned out to be an annus horribilis.

Toe-sucking, Squidgygate, Diana's biography...

and Windsor Castle up in flames.

The Queen might have thought it couldn't get any worse.

I think the whole institution now is so ridiculous.

I mean, years ago, we made the monarch, they reigned,

they did what we wanted them to do, and we then killed them.

I honestly don't see the purpose they serve.

The Queen And I was based on an idea Sue had been pondering for years...

..back when she lived round the corner from one of Leicester's

poorest estates, the Saff.

When we were at school, she talked about,

"Wouldn't it be funny if the Queen lived up the Saff?" and all of this.

We just laughed about it.

Ha! The Queen on a council estate!

It would never happen. Blah, blah, blah. You know?

Then this book came out and I could hear her, sort of, in the classroom

with these ideas that she had.

It's all about how the Queen copes

with life on a council estate.

When a republican party wins the general election,

the monarchy's abolished and the Royals sent to live as commoners,

in a street called Hellebore Close.

"The street sign at the entrance to the close had lost five black metal

"letters. Hell Close, it now said,

"illuminated by the light of a flickering street lamp.

"The Queen thought, 'Yes, it is hell, it must be,

for I've never seen anything like it in the whole of my waking life.' "

They meet the public when the public are wearing their best clothes,

when the public are probably sweating with nervousness.

They have absolutely no idea of how most people live.

Combining a love of the absurd with often biting satire,

Sue's timing was perfect.

I think, in a way, Sue's book spoke for all of us, because we'd spent

the year gobsmacked at what was going on in the Royal Family

and really wondering if they were royal at all and why

we should respect them when they were all behaving so terribly badly.

Poor old Philip can't cope at all. You send him off to the loony bin, don't you?

The thing about Philip is, he's very boring.

So I kept him in bed.

-I just didn't want to get him out of bed.

-A good place.

I have to tell you, Charles is wonderful.

He grabs it with great gusto.

He's in a shell suit with a ponytail.

Yet Sue didn't resort to caricature.

Her Royals are flesh and blood.

Sue was a republican, but she was very sympathetic

to the Royal Family and I think she felt very sorry for them.

What a lousy break they've had!

Let's try and make it better, make them real people.

"What must it feel like to open one's mouth and scream?

"The Queen stood over the washing-up bowl

"and gave a tiny experimental scream.

"To her ears, it sounded like a hinge needing oil.

"She tried again.

"Agh!

"It was quite satisfactory.

"And again... Agh!

"Her throat opened wide and the Queen could feel the scream

"travel up her lungs, overflow her windpipe,

"and roar out of her mouth like a British lion.

"Agh!

"Agh!"

I've published so many brilliant, funny women,

who write such intricately brilliant and hard-to-do fiction

and they will never win the Booker Prize,

because being a woman is one thing and being funny is worse.

It's seen as easy, and I think that's extraordinary,

when it's so hard to do.

In 1997, Sue's work would take a more serious turn.

Ghost Children's subject was abortion.

"Angela had wanted to shout at the woman.

"I don't think you can properly understand how much I want to

"get rid of this baby.

"It is an alien inside me.

"It has filled my belly and my head.

"It has turned me into an animal with an animal's responses.

"It is a loathsome parasite, feeding off me.

"Would you have me welcome a tapeworm into the world?

"I want all traces of it cleared out of my body.

"I will excavate the thing by hook, or indeed by crook.

"If the labour takes a year,

"and the pain makes me scream like an animal in a trap, I don't care.

"I will face it with fortitude.

"And when the invader has gone, I will reconvene.

"I will gather together the threads of my old life and

"I will forgive myself and eventually forget."

I think it was very important to Sue to write out something that had

happened to her in a much earlier life, that she had always felt...

..disturbed about.

Not disturbed BY so much as disturbed that she hadn't really

exorcised that and she hadn't really dealt with it in herself

and what it had meant to her.

And I think it was a very necessary book for her to write.

In 2005, Sue relived another early trauma.

This interview has never been broadcast.

When I was eight, eight and a half,

I have got a memory of being in a tree with two boys,

one either side of me.

When we witnessed...

..a murderer...

..pulling a girl that we knew...

..through the woods...

and up against the tree trunk.

And of the three of us freezing.

My memory is that...

..he was dragging her by her throat.

He strangled her.

But we did nothing to help her.

And then we eventually jumped down over her body...

..and ran to tell a bloke called Mr Gibson,

who kept a sweet shop,

and he disbelieved us.

He told us to get out.

The murder of 12-year-old Janet Warner shocked the local community.

Her killer was sentenced to death after the shortest trial on record.

That same year, Sue's father died.

My memory, I think possibly until this day,

is of me at eight years old being an adult.

Being a grown-up, coping in a grown-up way with...

..things that little children cannot cope with,

shouldn't have to cope with.

It is astonishing how many writers

have suffered similar things.

It turns you in on yourself.

You become very aware of atmosphere.

You notice things.

Over her career, Sue would write 16 books and more than a dozen plays,

but it was Adrian Mole to whom she returned again and again.

He would sort of recede for a few years and then she would say she'd

start to hear his voice louder in her head again after a few years.

It was like...

It was as if he wouldn't really go away properly.

We're right in The Cappuccino Years territory here.

This is when I got involved.

I can't tell you the excitement of playing Adrian Mole.

You grow up thinking you're going to be James Bond and then you get to be

Adrian Mole, but you can live with that.

You can live with that, cos he's such a great character.

Mole may have grown up, but some things didn't change.

You're so beautiful!

'Pandora's an MP.'

I think she wanted to critique the smoothness of the Labour machine...

..because Pandora is vain and self-involved and slick.

Ciao!

Words which could be applied to the New Labour...

..gang.

I didn't realise you had the Daily Telegraph on your side.

Oh, grow up! Do you want the bloody Tories in or out?

What about the little people you're always banging on about?

Well, I'm talking to YOU, aren't I?

-COLIN BROADWAY:

-I think everybody was excited.

The Conservatives had gone and we had this wonderful hope for the future.

Didn't last long.

I often write when I'm angry about something -

something that needs saying.

Like most of us, we're powerless, aren't we?

But I do think writers have quite a bit of power,

a little bit of influence.

Not much - I wouldn't say we have that much.

But I do think we have a slow influence.

She was furious.

There was no real change.

This smiling guy who...

..did nothing, offered nothing new.

I mean, I'm a sort of modern man, if you like, you know?

I'm part of the rock 'n' roll generation, the Beatles, colour TVs,

and all the rest of it.

"He shows a fear of differentiation and a marked preference for

"the ill-defined, the androgynous.

"When I asked him to name his favourite flower,

"he replied, 'Spring and summer flowers.'

"When I asked him if he had a favourite rock band, his answer was,

" The bands that everyone likes.'

"Asked to name a favourite book, he replied, 'The classics.'

"He is pathologically unable to commit to an opinion

"for fear of displeasing the questioner, in this case me.

"I asked him about his childhood.

"He said, 'I want to make it absolutely clear

" 'that I had a hugely enjoyable childhood.'

"At this point, he began to cry."

For Sue, the process of writing was becoming harder.

A diabetic for years, she was beginning to lose her sight.

You can't underestimate what a devastating blow it is.

And people would say, "You're so good about it,"

but, inside, I was just...

To me, not to be able to read, it's just...

I still haven't actually come to terms with it yet.

I still get...

You know, I can't bear... I just can't bear it.

When I auditioned for the part of Adrian,

even then she couldn't really see me sitting across from me,

so she had a big magnifying glass, like a reading magnifying glass,

came right up to my face.

She said, "Adrian can't be too good-looking."

She scanned me all over.

Obviously, I was ugly enough to play him.

Once again, Sue expressed her feelings through Mole.

When his best friend Nigel goes blind, Adrian is somewhat put out.

"Nigel didn't even smile.

"He seems to have lost his sense of humour along with his sight.

"I got him out of the car and escorted him across the car park

"and up the school assembly hall.

"He kept dragging his feet and falling over his stick and

"once he snapped, 'For Christ's sake, slow down!

" 'You're dragging me along as if I'm a bag of rubbish.' "

Nigel can say all those nasty things that blind people often want to say

but can't because...

you have to appear to be noble and accepting of your fate.

Sue's health would continue to decline.

Now in a wheelchair,

she suffered from arthritis caused by her worsening diabetes.

'You know, I've always been a bit of a lazy person,

'so being pushed around the shops,

'that's not the worst thing that can happen to you.

'The blindness is the thing.

'That's the thing that's very difficult to cope with.'

Even when she could no longer see...

..she insisted I did the observing for her.

She needed to know what people were doing.

"What's going on over there?" She could see something was happening

over there but no idea what, so I'd have to do the observation for her.

Go back.

Sue did try and learn to type.

I love that key - that's great.

But her efforts to use technology were short-lived.

Go back, you fool!

Wow! What a word rate, eh?

She would soon return to writing by hand.

How many words in a book?

At least 100,000.

It was blood, sweat and tears at times, but she wanted to write.

She always had something to say.

Can't read some of this, can you?

Yeah.

"Dear Mr Brown,

"Please allow me to congratulate you on being Prime Minister.

"You join the ranks of other great one-eyed men.

"Lord Nelson, Napoleon, George Melly and Cyclops, just to name a few."

I remember that. I do remember that, yes, I do remember that.

She couldn't see. She couldn't see when she wrote that.

It's just really big letters.

With the help of Colin and her family,

Sue wrote half a dozen more books.

She sometimes wouldn't start until three weeks before the deadline.

My mad hours are midnight onwards.

It takes me that long to get the courage to start to write because,

you know, I've always found it a very difficult process.

I have to kind of get myself worked up and about midnight I'm ready.

So, this is Sue's study.

This is where we used to work. And, er...

this is the main desk. I would sit here and Sue would sit here.

And so then she'd go like this...

She'd close her eyes and then she'd start...

She'd say something and I'd type it down,

and we'd type a few sentences and then she'd say,

"Read it back, read it back."

So I'd read it back.

And we'd change as we went.

Actually, what is missing is there were endless little yellow

Post-it Notes up here with notes. She'd have written them down.

She'd have woken up in the night or come down in the morning,

written a couple of lines and stuck them a Post-it Note, cos that was...

And thought, "We'll put them in somewhere." I mean, it was quite a...

Quite a haphazard process sometimes.

But every single word of it was hers,

and you changed a word at your peril.

In 2007,

Sue received a new lease of life when her son Sean donated a kidney.

I always remember her saying, you know, "This poor kidney,

"I bet it thinks it's died and gone to hell coming in my body," you know?

She'd always smoke like a chimney and she liked a drink.

She could make a joke of everything.

In 2009, Adrian Mole was pushing 40.

And now he had cancer.

I know how Mole feels about the fact that he has also got a serious illness.

I've made him have a far worse reaction than I had.

"Friday 26th of October - treatment.

"Saturday 27th of October - treatment.

"Sunday 28th of October - treatment.

"Monday 29th of October - treatment.

"Tuesday 30th of October -

"treatment.

"Wednesday 31st of October -

"Halloween."

In a sense, he's my worst side.

If people realised that I was so near to...

To Mole, they would be less...

Well, they wouldn't admire me.

Sue always said that she didn't keep a diary herself...

..but, in her archive, she left something unexpected.

So, this...

..is Sue's actual

personal diary.

"2.15, breast clinic.

"Had examination and ultrasound and, finally, biopsy.

"It is ridiculous. My hospital records are ludicrously large.

"I feel ashamed when I see it.

"9.50 - doctors, blood test.

"Brain scan.

"Kidney clinic.

"Foot clinic.

"I am unnaturally calm, still the eight-year-old,

"and stoic with the frozen, forced smile.

"People going around saying, 'Lovely sunny day!'

"Can't the fools see the clouds in the distance?"

It was horrible. And there were times when she was ill

and she was struggling and...

To go from someone who has been responsible, looking after you,

and then being someone that you need to look after,

it was the worst thing.

She wasn't getting out as much and doing the things she wanted to do,

but she still wanted to write,

so she ended up finding a way to talk about...

..doing a whole novel from one room.

"She picked up the saucepan,

"walked from the kitchen into the sitting room and threw the soup

"all over her precious chair.

"She then went upstairs, into her bedroom and,

"without removing her clothes or her shoes,

"got into bed and stayed there for a year."

It's difficult to write.

I find it very, very difficult.

What, you still find it hard to write?

Yeah, to make it look easy.

The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year is a tragi-comic tale of someone

who does exactly that.

You said that you were going to write one more comic novel

called A Lump In The Bed.

That's right!

Yeah. So, was that the germ of this?

It was. It was.

And I forgot to call it The Lump In The Bed.

The lump in question is Eva, a mild-mannered housewife

who finds an unusual way to take back control of her life.

By doing nothing.

"She would not be chopping vegetables and browning meat

"for a casserole.

"She would not be baking bread and cakes because Brian preferred

"the home-made to the shop-bought.

"She would not be cutting grass, weeding, planting and sweeping paths

"or collecting leaves in the garden.

"She would not be brushing her hair,

"showering or hurriedly applying make-up.

"Today, she would not be doing any of those things."

People love it and it got great reviews and she loved that.

She loved great reviews, and they were great for that book.

Sue planned to write one final Adrian Mole,

inspired by Coalition Britain.

But then she had a major stroke.

The very last time I saw her we were talking about the new Mole,

and she knew she couldn't write it, I think.

And she cried then, and that was the only time I saw her cry, ever.

Sue's diary offers a glimpse of her final year.

"Hospital, recovering from stroke."

She really did go through the wringer.

But, even now, in her last months,

Sue's sense of humour remained intact.

"My father is on the front page of the Leicester Mercury.

"He has won crisp eater of the year.

"The photograph shows him munching on a Grab Bag of Quavers.

"I said, 'You are abusing my transplanted kidney.

" 'Your daily intake of salt must exceed a drum of Saxa.' "

That's... I mean, that's Adrian. That's Adrian's voice.

I have written my own funeral plan.

"Dear loved ones, keep me away from the undertaker's premises.

"I'd like to stay at home in my book room.

"There's a black table that'll take a coffin nicely.

"Please make sure I'm dead.

"Too many people regain consciousness in the mortuary

"and wonder why they're wearing a long white frock.

"I don't want to be one of them.

"I'd like vases full of fresh flowers in the room.

"There'll be no morbid chrysanthemums."

I think she could have written another...

..ten wonderful novels.

She wasn't very old, and writers get better for many years.

And just a...

..warm and wonderful friend.

She was just so special.

She was just...

And I think, for me, personally...

..she just made my four years at school great.

"Grieve for moments, then be happy.

"Wear bright colours, laugh and sing.

"Throw my ashes in the garden, give a party, have a fling.

"Keep my photo on the mantel, keep my memory in your hearts.

"I have gone on an adventure to exciting foreign parts."

This is Sue's book Mr Bevan's Dream.

I read a couple of passages from it at Sue's funeral.

"I'm extremely proud of my background,

"and the more I travel and read about history...

"And the roots of what we call civilisation,

"the prouder I become of this huge international class.

"I know that they were the builders of the cathedrals,

"the carvers of the furniture...

"The seamstresses of the gorgeous clothes in the family portraits.

"They grew the hothouse flowers, they wove the carpets,

"bound the books in the libraries and gilded the ceilings.

"They also built the roads, the railways, the bridges

"and the viaducts and, what is more,

"they were fully capable of designing such marvels.

"No one class has a monopoly on vision and imagination.

"The only thing the working classes lacked was capital."