Have you ever read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend? Just a bit of background if you haven’t! It was Sue Townsend’s hilarious first novel, published in 1982. The book went on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide and be translated into 30 languages. There were seven sequel Adrian Mole novels that followed. The story was set in 1980s Leicester and followed the daily dramas and misadventures of Adrian’s teenage life. If you haven’t read it, you really should (here’s a review by teen site member Happygirl165 on why). But whether you have or haven’t I hope you enjoy these10 strange and lesser known facts:
- His name was nearly Nigel. The original 1982 Radio 4 series had the infamous teenager named Nigel Mole, but this was changed for the novel in to avoid confusion with Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle’s schoolboy creation Nigel Molesworth. Among the 32 alternative names Sue considered were Trevor, Robin, Darren and Victor.
2. Adrian was born on April 2nd 1967. The same school year as David Cameron, other notable births that year include Nick Clegg, Ed Balls, Noel Gallagher and the rather Pandora-esque actress Tara Fitzgerald. Sue first wrote Adrian as 14¾, however her radio editor John Tydeman suggested that greater physical changes occur a year earlier, hence the change in age.
3. He needn’t have gone to Specsavers. Despite the television series casting its lead bespectacled, Adrian makes no reference in his first diary to wearing spectacles nor attending opticians’ appointments. Sue said she never visualised Adrian facially; it wasn’t until she saw John Major (who was UK prime minister from 1990-97) on television that she finally realised what Adrian looked like.
4. Adrian wouldn’t have been a Tweeter. Sue Townsend said that Adrian “wouldn’t be using Twitter to memorialise his life” as “his thoughts and diary were very much private”. Despite this, the official @AdrianMole Twitter account is followed by around 9,500 fans, regularly updated with lines from the eight Mole novels.
5. He is very widely read and would have been an excellent member of the Guardian children’s and teens books site. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Adrian’s foray into joining the library saw him borrow an eclectic variety of literature; Pride and Prejudice (“very old fashioned; I think Jane Austen should write something a bit more modern”), Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (“felt a bit funny”), The Second Sex (“by a frog writer” AKA Simone Simone De Beauvoir), Alexandre Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask (“I know exactly how he feels”).
6. He has a legion of famous fans. Following Sue Townsend’s death in April last year, JK Rowling led the numerous celebrity tributes, revealing that the author “gave me so many laughs”. David Walliams gushed about Mole that “people will want to read this book forever”, and on television, Adrian’s Mum Pauline was played by a trio of national treasures; Julie Walters, Lulu and Alison Steadman.
7. Adrian never made the journey to Hollywood – yet. First a radio series, then the bestselling novel, Sue also adapted her book for a successful stage play with songs, which ran at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End between 1984-6. Three television series and the forthcoming musical adaptation leaves only the big screen as Adrian’s uncharted territory. Might Mole one day follow his fellow literary figures to Hollywood?
8. His first words had a poignant premonition. In his debut diary entry, on 1 January 1981, his very first words were “I will help the blind across the road”. Little did he know that his Mole creator Townsend would subsequently lose her own sight. She subsequently wrote blindness into the novel for Adrian’s best friend Nigel.
9. Sue Townsend referenced many of her friends and family in the books. Whether subtly or directly, many of Sue’s friends often found their names slipped into prose. Adrian is asked out in science class by one Elizabeth Sally Broadway, her daughter with husband Colin Broadway, and Adrian and Pandora see a pantomime starring Carole Hayman as the Princess, Sue Pomeroy as Widow Twankey and Lou Wakefield as the cow; all three of whom were regular collaborators of Townsend’s work on stage.
10. His final diary was his last. In an interview in the Guardian with Kate Kellaway in 2010, Sue said that “the only way I’ll kill Adrian is when I die myself”. Though we’ll never learn Adrian’s fate, his diagnosis of prostate cancer in the last book made for a potentially bleak future. Though Sue was working on a follow-up at the time of her death in April 2014 – provisionally titled Pandora’s Box - his final entry was made on Monday 5 May 2008, revealing that he would become a grandfather at 41 and hoping that we would “live long enough to see this child grow up”.