Tommy Donbavand
Writer and entertainer with a gift for making children laugh
TOMMY DONBAVAND, who has died aged 51, was a sometime clown, holiday camp entertainer, occasional actor, and writer of some 90 books for children, most notably the comedy-horror “Scream Street” series of 13 books for seven- to 10-yearolds, which were adapted into an animated television series by CBBC in 2015; he had an unrivalled gift for making children laugh.
The Scream Street books chronicle the adventures of Luke Watson, a young werewolf, and his best friends – a vampire and a mummy – as they negotiate the perils of supernatural life.
They were aimed at encouraging children to read and Donbavand, who worked extensively with the National Literacy Trust, devoted great energy to touring schools, libraries and book shops to run creative writing workshops and spread the word that reading can be fun.
Tommy Donbavand was born on November 28 1967 in Liverpool. When he was nine years old his parents moved to Leyland in Lancashire, and, as he recalled, “because they didn’t trust me to forward their post, I had to go with them”. From Lytham St Annes Technology College he trained as an actor at Blackpool and the Fylde College.
After leaving college he moved around the country and did many different jobs, including working as a clown called Wobblebottom, as a holiday camp entertainer and as an actor.
He played the Clear Lake MC in Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story in the West End for more than eight years and was beaten up by a bouncy castle in Going Off Big Time (2000). While treading the boards in London he wrote four books of children’s activities and games, including Boredom Busters and Quick Fixes For Kids’ Parties.
When Buddy ended, he moved to the north-east of England to write and perform for the Panto Company, producing pantomime tours for schools and clubs in the region and beyond. His shows included Hey Diddle Diddle, Rumplestiltskin and Humpty Dumpty and the Incredibly Daring Rescue of the Alien Princess in Deep Space. He also wrote five episodes of the CBBC series, Planet Cook (2004), as well as five titles in Egmont Books’ “Too
Ghoul For School” series, which he wrote under the pen name B Strange.
The success of the series led on to the “Scream Street” books, published by Walker Books in the UK and by Candlewick Press in the US, and to his “Fangs” series, featuring Special Agent Fangs Enigma and his sidekick, werewolf Agent Puppy Brown.
Donbavand’s other books included Zombie!, Wolf and Uniform, written for children with reading difficulties; the last, a story about a boy whose confidence is boosted by a magic second-hand uniform, won the Hackney Short Novel award.
For Badger Learning he worked on such series as “Snow-man”, “Time Trek”, “Once Upon Another Time…”, “Dark Reads” and “Teen Reads”.
In addition, Donbavand wrote for The Beano comic, becoming the main writer for “The Bash Street Kids”. He wrote tales from the island of Sodor for Thomas and Friends magazine. A lifelong fan of Doctor Who, he wrote the book Shroud of Sorrow, featuring the Eleventh Doctor.
Donbavand also contributed to magazines in the childcare and education field such as Practical Professional Child Care, Junior Education and the Times Educational Supplement.
In early 2016, Donbavand was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer and started a blog which documented his battle with the disease and which he adapted into two books, Tommy v Cancer: One Man’s Battle Against The Big C (2017) and Tommy v Cancer: One Man’s Battle Against The Big C (Again) (2018).
Tommy Donbavand is survived by his wife, Kirsty, and their two sons.
Tommy Donbavand, born November 28 1967, died May 14 2019