The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001

Sue Townsend

Published by Penguin/Michael Joseph, November 2008

A book review by Yusuf Martin

Admittedly the last of the Adrian Mole series I had in my sticky little fingers was Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (1999), having missed out on Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004).

In the move to Malaysia I, somehow, became de-Moled and lost all contact with the multifaceted Adrian Mole. This is, in some way, fortuitous as The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001, chronologically, breech that gap, and I can now happily purchase Townsend’s WoMD and not lose out on the story thread.

The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001 follow on neatly, and chronologically, from Sue Townsends highly successful Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, which has been, subsequently, aired as a popular TV series (in 2001). In the latest book the hapless Adrian is now 33, that is twenty years on from the very first book in the ‘Mole’ series - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾.

In the most recent hardback we find ourselves back in the strange offbeat world of Adrian Mole, his on-going antipathy towards his divorced and be-partnered parents, his struggles with growing children, their schools and multiple idiosyncrasies and the increasingly widening gap between Adrian’s ambitions and the stark reality of his life.

Adrian Arthur Mole is a not so proud father of two – Glen and William, and proud author of two cookery books – Offaly Good and Offaly Good Again. He is a wannabe writer/playwright. He no longer has a TV cookery show and is desperately trying to reside amidst some of the very worse housing estate inhabitants it might be possible to imagine.

Pursued by his ex-girlfriend (mother of Glen), Adrian attempts to hold his head up while engaging in an on/off relationship with his housing officer, one Pamela Pigg and the difficulties this brings into his far from uneventful life.

Meanwhile, for some years, Adrian has been secretly in love with Pandora, who has, since the previous book, been elevated from being a mere Member of Parliament to a Minister in the British Government, but, as ever, the relationship is fraught with all types of difficulties, so Adrian must content himself with living the life of a, not too comfortable, single father.

Adrian’s benignly soft heart, indelible parental responsibility and, at times, acutely burning ambitions lead him into a cornucopia of mixed blessings throughout the book - from the rescuing of a lonely, 95 year old pensioner from the sadness of a life alone, to the constant struggle between Adrian’s rampant creative spirit and his ever present need to earn a living to keep the eternal wolf from the door.

Adrian’s, ever present, dreams of his bizarre serial-killer comedy The White Van being picked up by the BBC remain as elusive as ever, meanwhile Adrian has some minor success with his epic poem The Restless Tadpole, while also engaged upon writing his new pig novel called, appropriately – Sty.

While purporting to be about Adrian, and the vagaries of his life, Sue Townsend injects much social and political satire into these works. The latest volume is no exception, with digs at the, then, British Prime Minister, other cabinet members, as well as the rich and wannabe famous.

I’ll not spoil the ending, so if you want to see how this is all resolved you will have to purchase the novel and see for yourself.

I confess to several (LOL) laugh-out-loud moments, and one almost (ROTFL) rolling-on-the-floor-laughing, it was my wife’s quizzical look which prevented the later. I smiled and just said – it’s this book, she nodded, sagely, bemused.

Gags come aplenty in this hilarious book which follows a grand traditional of English comic novels from G.K.Chesterton, to P.G.Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe and many, many, more. From the irony of being pulled over by the police for sharing a chocolate bar whist driving, to the potential faux pas involved in meeting Ms Pigg’s parents (Porky and Snouty)for the first time, the reader is pushed through the door marked hilarity, bludgeoned by wit/repartee and ejected into Adrian Mole’s practically surreal existence.

This present volume of the exploits of Adrian Mole is in fact the accumulation of the Diary of a Provincial Man, Sue Townsend wrote for the UK newspaper The Guardian in the years 1999 to 2001, hence the title The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole 1999-2001.

While her character, Adrian Mole, has become a well loved humorous social commentator, Sue Townsend, his creator, represents an endearing and resounding success story for our times.

Sue Townsend, born in 1946, is a constant reminder that you don’t have to have come from a ‘good’ family, or to have been to university to become a much loved, successful, intelligent writer of some of the best comic fiction published in the last three decades.

Born into the British working classes, Sue Townsend once lived in one of the poorer sections of Leister, England, failed her 11+ exam and went to a humble secondary modern school. As if that wasn’t enough, at the early age of eighteen she married to a sheet-metal-worker, had three children, later divorced, re-married and had another child with the man who was to promote her writing.

She worked in many menial jobs and secretly wrote, hiding the work from her first husband. In her second marriage her husband, a canoe-maker, encouraged her writing and eventually, for which we are all eternally grateful, she, and Adrian Mole were published.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾, her first novel was based upon her experiences at school. It became a best seller in the 1980s, as did her subsequent novels. Together the volume of her work has been translated into at least thirty-four languages, perhaps more as I write - the Adrian Mole diaries alone have sold over eight million copies worldwide.

Sue Townsend is an honorary doctor of Letters from Loughborough University, and holds an honorary doctorate from Leister University. In 2001 she was registered legally blind, due to diabetes.

It is mentioned that Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004) might be the final volume to the life and stories of Adrian Mole esquire.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men

Daniel Chan, has written, in Cheap Thrills – Darwinism, barbarism, eugenics and swashbuckling, (Off the Edge 48) his usual brilliant article, this time concerning the old Pulp magazines (so called because the paper they were printed on, was cheaply made out of wood pulp paper).

Due to the sheer brilliance of Daniel’s piece, and the depth of information he had included on those Pulp heroes he had written about, I had read it through before I realised that not one mention was made of the Pulps being a precursor to American comic books. Neither was there a mention of one of the most famous Pulp heroes – The Shadow, whose stories featured in radio shows, films, books, magazines and comic books.

While many other outstanding characters emerged from the Pulps, many of which Daniel has named, few were to have such an ongoing impact into modern American popular culture than The Shadow.

The Shadow is rumoured to be the creation of one Walter B. Gibson. Emerging as an eerie narrator from a very popular detective radio series - Detective Hour (American radio, 1930) in 1931 The Shadow was given a Pulp magazine which lasted for eighteen years, and was to have many writers. Five years later (1936) The Shadow was given his own radio series with The Shadow being played by a young, articulate, Orsen Wells - the show ran until 1954.

In 1938 a Shadow syndicated comic-strip began. This led to books, comic books, films, magazines etc. The shadow has been reprised many times since the 1930s, mostly in comic books, but one lack luster film was made in 1994 with Alec Baldwin starring, this chased previous films from 1937, 1938, 1940 and 1946.

The Shadow will be remembered by his by-line - "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh! The Shadow knows..." But The Shadow will also be remembered for influencing the style of another great detective, one who, like The Shadow, shies from the light and prefers the intimacy of shadows to strike fear into the hearts of men who do wrong– the dark knight himself – Batman.

In interviews with comic historians it has been revealed that Batman was originally written by writers who had worked on episodes of The shadow, and that one writer especially – Bill Finger, emulated The Shadow’s style to depict the Batman character. Stranger than that, in The Shadow (1939) story ‘Death's Harlequin’ there is a villain only known as Number One, from whom The Joker, Batman’s most infamous nemesis, may be derived.

Number One dresses in a clown's costume with wide white ruffles at the neck and large white buttons. "The thin lips were drawn away from skull-like teeth. The cheeks were sunken and leathery. Dank black hair lay matted thinly on a baldish scalp the color of old parchment. A living corpse in the costume of a gay Harlequin! With a wide-muzzled gun. And a jeering laugh that made the silence in the room crawl with menace." (The Shadow #173 "Death's Harlequin", Vol. 29, No. 5, Published: 01/05/39).

Stranger still - Theodore Tinsley who was involving in writing the ‘Death’s Harlequin’, Shadow story, was also writer of the very first Batman comic story.

Many Shadow enthusiasts claim that Batman could never fill the void left by The Shadow’s departure from popular culture, but this has not prevented people from continuing to allude to The Batman as The Shadow’s natural successor.

In the Batman comic, (no. 253 - Nov 1973), a story, appropriately called Who Knows What Evil--?, teams Batman and The Shadow working together against their common foe – wrong doers, further emphasising links between the two dark detectives. At one point during this comic book story, Batman faces The Shadow and says - “I’ve never told anyone this….but you were my greatest inspiration.”

It is a pity that Daniel Chan omitted The Shadow from his, otherwise, excellent article, especially as The Shadow has such poignant links to The Dark Knight and the on-going Joker/Batman mythos.

The Spirit of The Spirit critiquing the critic

While I cannot critique Frank Miller’s film The Spirit, not having had a chance to watch it, I can, however critique the critic S.B.Toh for some of their gaffs in the review Frankly my dear...

Yes critics are very often too subjective in their approach to reviews, and in this S.B.Toh is no exception, but clever they are not - sorry I refer to ‘they’ and ‘their ‘as I have no idea which sex S.B.Toh might be.

S.B.Toh makes an unjust, and quite unfair, comparison between the amazingly awful films of Uwe Boll (House of the Dead, The Name of the King, Blood Rayne etc) and the comic book adaptations of famous comic book creator Frank Miller (Sin City, 300, The Spirit). Why unjust and unfair? Frank Miller is ten times the film maker that Uwe Boll is, and the fact that Frank Miller actually knows his stuff when it comes to comics, as he created some of the most memorable comic books in their history – notably writing on the comic books Batman: The Dark Knight, Hard Boiled, Sin City, Daredevil, 300, Ronin etc.

But more than just giving readers a highly personalised diatribe on the weaknesses of the film in question – The Spirit, S.B.Toh reveals their dreadful ignorance when they say that the film is ‘Based upon an obscure 1940s comic”. Obscure to S.B.Toh maybe, but the rest of humanity has a very high regard not just for the character of The Spirit aka Denny Colt, but also for his creator - Will Eisner one of the all time greats of comic art.

The Spirit is so obscure, that it has been continuously in print since it first touched newsprint. I’ll not mention the numerous comic book companies that have kept The Spirit in print, so as not to weigh too heavy on the reader but they range from Harvey Comics (1960s) through to Kitchen Sink and DC Comics (2000s). Now, one would not imagine that DC Comics – the publisher of Superman and Batman titles, is too obscure. Nor, I would imagine, is the fact that DC Comics featured a Batman/Spirit team-up in 2007.

I don’t defend Miller’s film, but I do take exception to S.B.Toh’s poor research.

Perhaps S.B.Toh is not a fan of comic books, perhaps S.B.Toh is not a fan of films either, in which case perhaps S.B.Toh should keep his/her opinions, as verbal and as nauseating as they are, to themselves and save The Star readers from their endless prattle.

Message to S.B.Toh, critique by all means, but the art of the critique is in revealing enough of the film/book/CD etc, without bludgeoning the reader by your personal biases and without trying to project your (lack of) cleverness.