a b Marcus Williamson "Sue Townsend obituary: Author whose hapless, brilliantly drawn teenage hero, Adrian Mole, made her the best selling author of the 1980s", The Independent, 11 April 2014 The 'same age as Jesus when he died', Adrian Mole has become a martyr: a single-father bringing up two young boys in an uncaring world. Leonard "Len" and Doreen "Dore" Legg are the proprietors of the Lendore Spa Hotel. The couple are miserable, penny-pinching people and are reluctant to give decent bar facilities to George and Pauline Mole and Sharon Bott. The couple charge a ridiculous price for the minibars in their bedrooms. They do not provide bar food after 10:30pm, and do not cook a decent breakfast. Townsend was poor until well into her thirties, and used her experiences of hardship in her work. In her later years she experienced ill health, in part related to the diabetes she developed in the mid-1980s, and in her last years endured serious sight and mobility problems. Hugo Fairfax-Lycett is Mangold Parva's local aristocrat. He frequents the Bear Inn and, like many others of his fellow barflies, dislikes the smoking ban. He employs Daisy Mole as his PA, a job she previously held in London. Hugo and Daisy eventually develop feelings for each other and start an affair, leading to Daisy leaving Adrian, with the two sharing custody of their daughter Gracie. The couple decide to convert the land surrounding Fairfax Hall into a safari park, much to the anguish of the villagers. They themselves form a mob and march to Fairfax Hall. Hugo, rather conveniently, decides to go for a spin in his quad bike, but after some hours does not return. Daisy calls Adrian and the villagers form a search party, the men hunting Hugo and the women, George and Adrian staying behind to comfort Daisy. Hugo is found underneath his quad bike, having crashed and suffering from minor concussion. After making a full recovery, he and Daisy open up Fairfax Hall to the public, allowing Nigel and Lance to conduct their wedding there. Hugo has two daughters from a previous marriage.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾-The Play (Leicester Phoenix, 1984) now known as Sue Townsend Theatre Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life. a b c "Interview: Secret passions of a republican mole: Sue Townsend explains why she killed off the Queen Mother in a council house", The Independent, 1 September 1992 Sue Townsend (27 January 2000). "Adrian Mole is now aged 32 | Books | The Guardian". London: Books.guardian.co.uk . Retrieved 7 July 2010. Wayne Wong is a former school friend of Adrian. As an adult he runs a Chinese restaurant (alternately named as either "Wong's" or "Imperial Dragon.") He is highly sarcastic and dislikes Marigold Flowers, who, in Wayne's words, resembles one of his pet koi carp.Worse, as he slides down the employment ladder, from deskbound civil servant in Oxford to part-time washer-upper in Soho, he finds that critical reception for his epic novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, is not quite as he might have hoped. Alpha, Griffith and Tamzin Palmer are the children of Christian and Cassandra. They are afraid of their mother. Christian escapes from her by taking himself and the children to visit his mother in Wigan, leaving Adrian home alone with Cassandra. They are very advanced children; Griffith, only five, has a reading age of thirteen. My parents are eating different things at different times, so I usually have six meals a day because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. (c)

a b White, Lesley (15 October 2006). "Sue Townsend". The Times. London . Retrieved 1 February 2008.Nigel’s parents haven’t got a car because his father’s got a steel plate in his head and his mother is only four feet eleven inches tall. It’s not surprising Nigel has turned out bad really, with a maniac and a midget for parents. (c) Townsend's new partner encouraged her to join a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, in 1978, when she was in her early thirties. Initially too shy to speak, she did not write anything for six weeks, but was then given a fortnight to write a play. This became the thirty-minute drama Womberang (1979), set in the waiting room of a gynaecology department. [10] At the Phoenix, she became the writer-in-residence. [5] These first two books were adapted into a television series, broadcast in 1985 and 1987, and a video game.

Bill Blane is the head of the Badger department. He becomes part of a love triangle between himself, Megan Harris and Mr. Brown. He and Megan are suspended after Brown caught the two photocopying their private parts, the photographs of which are passed around the office. Mrs. Appleyard, the domestic science teacher, who confiscated Barry Kent's Benson & Hedges cigarettes - the teachers were later seen to have been smoking them in the staffroom. Justine A lap-dancer at the Secrets Club in Soho who visits Mole at Savages, as a friend of Adrian's. She is known for a python act. For a short while she becomes the lover of Zippo Montefiori, who describes her thus: "She's a wanker's dream! She's a dislocated wrist! She's duvet heaven!". At the time of writing the first Adrian Mole book, Townsend was living on the Eyres Monsell Estate, near the house in which playwright Joe Orton was brought up. Mole "came into my head when my eldest son said 'Why don't we go to safari parks like other families do?' That's the only real line of dialogue from my family that's in any of the Mole books. It's in because it triggered it. I remembered that kind of whiny, adolescent self-pity, that 'surely these are not my parents.'" [13] Success of Adrian Mole [ edit ] It is all round the school that an old lady of seventy-six frightened Barry Kent and his dad into returning my menaces money. Barry Kent daren’t show his face. His gang are electing a new leader. (c)

Adrian Mole Books Overview

It’s a good thing British subjects are no longer beheaded for treason, or Sue Townsend’s head would roll for her outrageously cutting depictions of the powers that be.’ Newsday