The Secret Life of Sue Townsend (Aged 68 and 3/4)

I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.

(Adrian Mole)

As a teenager I considered myself an intellectual. For a start I was one of nine children in the school that regularly did their homework. I was one of four boys that read outside of class. And on Sunday evenings I was one of one that would sit down to watch a TV literary adaptation with their mum. Yet for all of that I was not clever. When I used to give essays in I would include words like ‘exacerbate’ despite not knowing what it meant: it was enough that I had heard of it, to hell with the context or definition. Like the career of Lady Gaga, all my work was ostentatiously overwrought, a look-at-me appeal for attention, a cry for artistic recognition' I was all thesaurus and no substance. I still worry that I write like this today.

I wrote like she dressed.

Preferring to spend nights in reading Cider with Rosie as opposed to being out drinking it in the park helped cultivate my intellectual persona. Why freeze your balls off drinking cheap apples when you could be inside imbibing sweet, sweet words? Better to fill your head with stories than flood your basin with booze, surely? I would look at the lads getting off with girls and think their’s was a hollow victory. They hadn’t had to work for it. Their mating ritual a caveman smash and grab. I bet they had asked the girl out in dull, leaden prose. I don’t imagine there was a Shakespearean simile in sight. I, on the other hand, believed in courtly love; in chivalry; in gallantry, in being exceedingly polite until the right moment arose to fire Cupid’s poetry their way.

Is it any wonder I loved Adrian Mole at this age?

Adrian Mole is the comic creation of Sue Townsend. He is the reason why I fell in love with reading. Oblivious to music through my teens, comedy was the North Star that guided me through these years. It was a revelation reading a book about someone my age that shared the same concerns I did: Would I ever fall in love? Was my penis large or just above average? Would my school essays ever be published? I laughed at the pomposity of Adrian; his naïve belief that he was in somehow special, then recoiled thinking, “oh, this is a bit like me.” But that was the thing: he was a bit like me, but more monstrous than me. Adrian made teenage outsiders feel less bad about our romantic pretensions because we could never be as bad as that. We could continue to write our terrible poetry because it would never be as woeful as, Pandora I adore ya/ I implore ye/ Don’t ignore me.

Adrian.

The reason I write about Adrian Mole after all these years is because last night Sue Townsend was the subject of a BBC2 documentary. Sadly, Townsend died two years ago following many battles with illness; however, she left a life story that is remarkable. Born on a Council Estate she left school aged just 14. She quickly met a sheet metal worker and married. Unable to hold down a job, she flitted between occupations. Whilst working in a clothes shop she was sacked for reading Oscar Wilde in the fitting room. Her husband thought education belonged in the classroom and disapproved of her intellectual pursuits – she was forced to hide her writing under the cushion to curb his opprobrium. By the time she was 23 she was a single mother with three children. Despite this responsibility, she continued to read and write with a voracity that would put her creation to shame. On meeting her second husband she found a person that would give her the confidence to join a writer’s group, which gave her the drive to become published.   

Once Adrian was published her writing career burgeoned. In fact, Adrian was so popular that it was the best-selling British book of the 1980’s; the follow-ups enjoying huge success too. In watching the documentary though I realised there was more to Townsend than her zitty hero: she was also a playwright who wrote vital pieces on immigrants and women’s issues. She wasn’t afraid to upset the status quo, penning The Queen and I, a scabrous imagining of what life would be like for the Royals if Britain adopted a republic. Despite making millions, she stayed in Leicestershire and remained loyal to her Socialist values. She was wonderful, brilliant and funny.

Townsend.

It seems fitting that this pseudo-intellectual blog should be concluded by Adrian Mole, another pseud like me.

• ·      I'm not sure how I will vote. Sometimes I think Mrs Thatcher is a nice kind sort of woman. Then the next day I see her on television and she frightens me rigid. She has got eyes like a psychotic killer, but a voice like a gentle person. It is a bit confusing.
• ·      [Good Friday] Poor Jesus, it must have been dead awful for him. I wouldn't have the guts to do it myself.
• ·      My father was reading Playboy under cover of the candlelight and I was reading Hard Times by my key-ring torch. 
• ·      My skin is dead good. I think it must be a combination of lucozade and being in love.

The Secret Life of Sue Townsend (Aged 68 and ¾) is available on iPlayer now.