The biggest Airfix... putting together a Lancaster bomber
As her schoolboy hero Tom Gates gets his own TV series, the popular children’s author reveals what turned her alter ego into such a huge draw
LOOKING like a jumbo Airfix model, Lancaster bomber parts are laid out to be assembled – but this is even better than a toy... it’s the real thing.
A devoted crew are in their element restoring the Second World War beauty in a £4million project which will see it become the world’s third flying Lancaster.
Each summer the plane – named Just Jane – is rebuilt and used for ground displays and taxiing passengers around the airfield at former RAF East Kirkby in Lincs.
But in winter it is stripped down and checked, repaired or rebuilt to win a certificate of airworthiness. The parts are fully restored one at a time. This season it is the tail and fuselage being worked on.
Andrew Panton, who heads the team, said: “We’ve set it out to see just what it would look like from the air, as an Airfix kit would have done in the packet.
“The Lancaster is a sectional aircraft, so it does come apart in its major component pieces. It bolts back together again in a similar way you glue an Airfix kit back together.
“A lot of the parts you’ll see here are parts you’ll take out of the Airfix kit so it is very reminiscent of being a child, building it up. Actually taking the aircraft apart and bolting it back together again is a similar concept.”
Andrew, 33, added: “For instructions we have original RAF manuals and thousands of original Avro [the Lancaster manufacturer] drawings.”
His crew are three years into the 10-year project. Happily, he is qualified to fly the four-engine plane when they are finished.
The Lancasters were the workhorses of the war, carrying the heaviest bombs, including the 22,000lb Grand Slams and the Dam Busters’ bouncing bombs.
SHE DOODLES on her clothes, her shoes, her jewellery and the walls of her home in Brighton.And she loves practical jokes – including the famous CaramelWafer trick (remove the choc bar and replace the empty wrapper carefully inside the packet). Her name is Liz Pichon and she is a 57-year-old children’s author and illustrator, but in her head she is 10-year-old schoolboy Tom Gates – star of a hugely popular book series.
Talking to Liz, it soon becomes clear that all her plots featuring the doodling schoolboy beloved of generations of children, come straight from her own experience and feelings.
“I try always to put the publishers out of my head and think about what I would want to read,” says Liz, with her trademark enthusiasm. “I devoured The Beano growing up as I’m dyslexic and the squares of pictures really helped me to grasp the story. Now I want every page to have a page-turning moment, as well as drawings, details, doodles and jokes.”
This approach has made Liz very successful indeed. Over the past decade, she has sold more than five million copies of her novels, each of which is designed to look like a child’s dog-eared exercise book. This year is the 10th anniversary of Tom Gates and will see the publication of Ten Tremendous Tales, the 18th book in the series.
What’s more, a new TV show, The Brilliant World of Tom Gates, has just launched on Sky. It’s a mix of animation and live action, with additional songs, games and crafts. It features the voice of actress Catherine Tate, and segments where Liz gives tips on how to draw the characters at home.
“I’m always collecting new ideas,” she says of the Tom Gates filter through which she views the world.
“I said to the publisher – ‘yes, and I’m putting a flip book in the corner’. I quite enjoy being surprising. I want the books to include everything I loved as a kid; cartoon strips, jokes, hobbies, my own life.”
And, in so doing, the former graphic designer has turned generations of reluctant readers into children who realise that, maybe, reading might be for them after all… If reading can be like this.
“I remember giving a talk in one school and being met by a teacher who laughed and said, ‘We’ve had to work really hard to wean the children off your books’. It was intended as a compliment, but it made me sad. There is an idea that because picture books are full of drawings that they are not real books. But there is room for all types.”
She ardently believes that whatever makes a child turn a page is a good thing.
“I’ve met lots of creative people who loved comics when they were growing up, including Eric Carle who wrote The Very Hungry Caterpillar and former children’s laureate, Malorie Blackman.
“Visual storytelling fires up your imagination, and really great picture books work on so many levels – from the font and layout to the artwork and story itself,” she says.
To promote the brand and help kids think creatively, Liz now runs workshops and
pets,
friends.
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mining roadshows to get children easy-to-imitate style.
“The way you learn is by looking at things and copying them. They don’t have to be perfect. My drawing is not the best – I’ve got friends who are illustrators and I could never draw like them. But the message behind my books is that it doesn’t have to be perfect, just have a go and don’t worry about making mistakes.”
For Liz, the daughter of a sweet salesman, this was an especially important perspective due to her dyslexia – a condition also experienced by her son Zak, 29, the eldest of her three children with record producer Mark Flannery. The couple also have daughters, Ella, 26, and Lilly, 22.
“Mine wasn’t a formal diagnosis in those days, but my parents were certainly scratching their heads. At school, I was very enthusiastic and always wanted to have a go, but all my creative writing was filled with red pen. That spelling!”
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ER FRIENDS recognised her gift for drawing, but tests taken when leaving primary school limited her secondary school choices.
“My mum was very good at making things, and so was I. But I was always made to feel at school that being good at drawing or being creative was never as good as anything else.”
She says she can still break into a cold sweat when she recalls the humiliation of maths lessons. “My brain didn’t work like that and I was always one of the last to be let out if we were doing our times table. If I could remember just one, and if that one came up, my hand would shoot up. I was so desperate to do well.
“We used to have sessions covering our books in paper – that was always my favourite part of school.”
However, she found secondary school art lessons deeply frustrating. “I remember that we were given the inside of a green pepper to draw, and then a lupin. Mine didn’t look right and neither did my friends’ drawings. Some of them were really good at cartoons, but comics don’t have the same heft.”
Her son Zak’s dyslexia was coupled with