No child buys a book because they want it to be seen on their coffee table
COMEDIAN-TURNED-AUTHOR DAVID BADDIEL TALKS TO LUKE RIX-STANDING ABOUT IMPRESSING YOUNG READERS, AND THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND STAND-UP
SOME authors are inspired by their relationships, others by travelling the world, but for David Baddiel it was a family outing to the Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio Tour in Leavesden.
“My son Ezra, who was around eight years old, asked why Harry didn’t run away from the Dursleys and find some better parents,” he recalls. “It gave me an idea for a world in which children could choose their own parents, and it immediately sounded like a classic children’s story.”
The result was The Parent Agency, and more than half a million book sales later, David has become a regular on the bookshelves of the nation’s children.
“It turns out I have a facility for it,” he says. “Being a comedian allows you to remain a child inside, so when
I sit down to write a new book I think about what my inner child wants.”
He was already a published novelist, writing adult fiction, but his imaginative, finelyplotted stories struck a chord with his new audience.
“Children buy books because they think they’ll be fun or funny, so you have a very direct relationship with your readers, and kids will tell you exactly what they think,” says David, 55.
“To write a successful literary novel, you have to convince the cultural gatekeepers – you need a good review in the Guardian, or to be nominated for a big award. No child buys your book because they want it to be seen on their coffee table.”
David is a man of many talents. First and foremost a comedian, he’s dabbled in theatre, podcasts and screenplays, and remains perhaps best known for co-creating the England football anthem, Three Lions. The shift into children’s writing was never really planned, but he argues that the same principles underpin most of what he does.
“I do see myself as a writer, but if I was going to put anything on my passport – and I know it sounds a bit pretentious – it would be storyteller. That takes me all the way from comedy to a documentary I’m currently making about holocaust denial.”
He can draw a particularly clear line between his children’s books and stand-up comedy. Back in the late-Eighties, his big break came from a sketch show called The Mary Whitehouse Experience, in which he and fellow up-and comer Rob Newman did a sketch called History Today, playing two old history professors slagging each other off like children in a school playground.
“The heart of its success was the truth that no one really grows up,” says David, “that everyone, except possibly Michael Gove, remains a child and is just busking their way through adulthood. A lot of comedy is about proving that adulthood doesn’t really exist.”
His new book, The Taylor TurboChaser, is about a disabled 11-year-old girl whose wheelchair is transformed into a super-car.
“A lot of my books dig into wish fulfilment,” he says.
“The new one is about driving, and one of the things I wanted to do when I was nine was drive.”
Is David still an avowed petrol-head? He laughs, then says: “No, not really. I did have a classic car, but I liked the aesthetic more than the tinkering so it fell apart. My dad was more into it – he had a Triumph Spitfire, then a Ford Capri, and I used to sit in it and play with the gear-stick and steering wheel. I think that’s where the story came from.”
That the book centres around a wheelchair was not a politically correct choice – “I didn’t think ‘this is really important’, it just felt more poignant and interesting” – but David is conscious of the increasing calls for diversity in children’s literature.
“I have included BME (black and minority ethnic) characters in all my books,” he says, “just because it’s real. My children are at state schools and have diverse friends. It would seem ridiculous for my schools to be anything but diverse – it just wouldn’t reflect modern reality.”
The book also has a female protagonist. “Most of my books have centred on boys, and I wanted to get away from that,” says David, who also has an 18-year-old daughter.
Even just a few years ago, he says, there was a sense that male protagonists were safer – that girls would read about boys, but that boys might not read about girls. “I hope that’s not true anymore,” he says.”
As a father, David has been able to monitor the tastes of his own children, and he’s been impressed by what he’s seen.
“Children are so much more sophisticated now than when I was a kid. They’ve grown up with the Simpsons, Pixar and the internet, rather than the Magic Roundabout. I don’t write down to children comically in my books – I try to be as funny as I would be with adults, just not on adult subjects.”
■ The Taylor TurboChaser by David Baddiel is published by Harper Collins, priced £12.99. Available now.