Think you know everything about... ANSWERS

1IT will be the 40th anniversary of The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ on October 7. What was Adrian originally called? A. Dylan; B. Tarquin; C. Nigel; D. Sue.

2

AuThOR Sue Townsend said she didn’t know what Adrian looked like until she saw . . . who on TV?

A. Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean; B. Noel Edmonds; C. Jeremy Paxman; D. John Major. 3TRUE

OR FALSE: Townsend said she wrote the book for middle-aged men. 4WhICh of these did the book NOT achieve? A. Sold a million copies within a year.

B. Topped the hardback and paperback bestseller lists at the same time.

C. Made Townsend the bestselling writer of the 1980s. D. Made its author the first to earn more than $1 billion from her books.

5WhICh

of the following is a line from Mole?

A. ‘An anarchic insurrection had been launched by one of my privates.’

B. ‘In my mind, I’m probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.’

C. ‘I was racked with sexuality but it wore off when I helped my father put manure on our rose bed.’

D. ‘You wouldn’t think girls would like sex. You’d think it’s too rude for them.’

6TRUE

OR F ALSE: The 16thcentury Tudor boy king Edward VI and former prime minister David Cameron have both been compared to the fictional diarist.

1) C. Nigel

Mole’s debut was in a BBC Radio 4 play, but his creator sue Townsend was persuaded the name was too similar to another fictional schoolboy, Geoffrey Willans’ Nigel Molesworth. Townsend said: ‘I made lists of soft-sounding names. He could never have been called “steve”, for instance.’

2) D. John Major

sHe said: ‘I couldn’t imagine what he looked like until I saw John Major on the television and Margaret Thatcher was introducing her Cabinet. There was this geeky-looking man at the back. I said to my children: “My God, that’s Adrian Mole!” ’ Private eye magazine went on to publish spoof extracts from what they called: The secret Diary of John Major, Aged 47¾.

3) FALSE

IN fACT, Townsend — who as a youth worker spent a lot of time with adolescents — said she intended it ‘for mothers of teenage boys to give them an inkling of what goes on’ in their son’s head.

4) D. Made its author the first to earn more than $1 billion from her books.

THAT honour was J. K. Rowling’s. 5) C. ‘I was racked with sexuality but it wore off when I helped my father put manure on our rose bed’

A. Is from Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint; B. J. D. salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye; D. Doing It, by Melvin Burgess.

6) TRUE

HIsToRIAN David starkey compared edward vI’s diary to Mole’s. The teenage diarist was born on April 2, 1967 (sharing a birthday with Townsend), meaning former Prime Minister David Cameron would have been in the same school year, as one political commentator pointed out.