The Netmums Podcast - S8 Ep8: Greg James and Chris Smith on their new book 'Super Ghost' and how they both struggle with the word literature!

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

On this week's podcast, Wendy and Jen welcome special guests Greg James and Chris Smith into their Netmums studio. As successful authors in their own right, the boys talk about turning teachers into baddies to get kids engaged in reading, and why they think there's genuinely a book out there for everyone. Their latest release 'Super Ghost' is out now.

You're listening to The Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollage. And me, Jennifer Howes. On this week's show... It's great to learn new things, but at school, you're sometimes so stuck in a, you must learn this to pass the exam. It doesn't matter if you don't really understand it, just remember the facts and then write them down in a few months' time. But actually, just learning new things is brilliant, and the same with books.

But before all of that... Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode now it's friday afternoon i should have a gin i don't have a gin because i've got to go and pick the kids up so i am relying heavily on the two gentlemen who are sitting here looking at me surrounded by pandas to entertain us jen give us intro. Tell us who we're talking to. Hi, Wendy. Yes, this week we have not just one, but two fantastic guests, authors, broadcasters, talented and funny guys. Greg James is a radio and television presenter, comedian and author. He's host of the BBC One Breakfast Show, does the Teach Me a Lesson podcast with his wife, Bella Mackey, and the two of them live in North London with their dog, Barney. Also with us, Chris Smith, lovingly known as Chris Smith with the News.

He's been Greg's friend and sidekick for years. He also lives in North London with his family and a cat named Mabel. Together, the pair co-author children's books, and we're here today to talk to them about their most recent one, Superghost. So welcome, gents. Thanks for the intro, Jim. Great, great intros. Great to be here. I didn't know you were a comedian as well, Craig. Well, I have a lot to prove in the next 40 minutes. You do. We've got to be as entertaining as gin, basically.

We can do that. Yeah, of course we can. No pressure. Why don't you send a taxi to pick up your children from school and say mummy's had a fall and needs to lie down for a bit? In the Victorian times,

mummy has the vapours. Mummy will simply be lying in a darkened room for a little while because she can't deal with the world for now. Do you know what? It's sorely tempting. Well, thanks for having us on. We've never done this before, but we're pleased to do it now. So I want the lowdown on Superghost, please. You wrote your first book, Kid Normal, in 2017, I think.

And I personally love Mr. Flash and the fact he calls kids useless maggots because I call my kids maggots. So it's kind of I think I stole it from you. What inspired you to write Super Ghost and give us a bit of blurb, please. Just quickly, I'm amazed and so pleased you brought up Mr. Flash because he is my favourite character. I think we maybe ever created because he is a he is an amalgamation of all the PE teachers that we've ever been taught PE by or shouted at or um loosely and jokingly bullied by um but yeah we um we we've we've loved characters like that who are just quite mean but also quite stupid yeah and we discover more about Mr Flash as the kid normal series goes on and discover he's kind of a he's kind of a tragic character.

But anyway, Super Ghost. Super Ghost is, as you say, our new book. And you can kind of get quite a lot of it from the title, I think. It's about a superhero called Doctor Extraordinary. But there is a twist in the tale because he dies right at the beginning of the book. So we thought rather than dramatically kill off a character at the end, as some authors have done, we'll turn that on its head and we'll dramatically kill off a character, not even in chapter one, in the prologue.

Dead in the prologue. That's gutting. You're a little bit stuffed if you're one of those people who skips over the prologue. Yeah, you'll... Who's skipping over the prologue? Who skips over prologues? What kind of psychopaths do that?

Well, more to the point, when you get the film rights for this, you're not going to get anyone decent to play him because they'll be dead in the prologue well no because it's a dream dream part it's a dream part yeah because he comes back you see because um in chapter we've had the prologue the very dramatic prologue dr extraordinary gets blown up inside a giant robot with his nemesis captain chaos they've both been been exploded. But then we leap to chapter one and we meet Sonny, who is Doctor Extraordinary's 11-year-old number one fan,

who discovers that he's the only person that can see the ghost of the superhero and the only person that can hear him. So it's all about, you know, sort of Sonny dealing with the fact that his hero is not there anymore and the hero dealing with the fact, the superhero dealing with the fact

that he's now a ghost. Even though he's got super strength, he can't touch anything. It's interesting you bring that up though, because I was just thinking about some films where they're clearly really low budget, but they get budget for one day for a really famous actor.

And maybe what we should have done is really kill them off, had the funeral in chapter one and then gone, right, well, we had a day with Idris Elba or something. And then a cast of nobodies. But yeah, he is present throughout the whole story. And I'm so pleased we finally killed off a character

because I've been trying to kill one off for five books. And in the sixth one, Chris said, yeah, okay, let's do it. It's quite hard to do in a kid's book is to kill off a character. You know, as writers, they always say, kill your darlings. But you've just been trying to kind of kill your characters. Yeah. Greg's been he's been going on, as he said, for a few books time going like we should kill a character. It's really dramatic.

So when we came to write this book, I said, OK, we will. But right at the beginning. And we sort of as you say, it's a it's a slightly, you know, people sometimes would shy would shy away i think from dealing with that subject for kids but we do it with a lot of uh a lot of silliness and a lot of our trademarks sort of um you know talking them through it so we come in right right in the prologue and say you know we've got to get this out the way first guys it's a book about a ghost so something really sad has got to happen in chapter one but we'll be with you all the way through it's going to be lots of silliness on the way so let's kind of get it over with let's have the dramatic prologue.

We like breaking the fourth wall with the books like we do on the radio and like radio does all the time really. But that's the idea of being with the readers while there's a dramatic story going on and you can break out of it and then just have a pause and a breather and just say-

And have a chat and then go back. And have a chat and say, it's going to be fine. Don't worry about it. Like death happens and that kind of thing but it'll be all right in the end type thing we really love the idea of of sort of holding the kids hands throughout the story it's it adds an extra dimension to it as well i think i was gonna say that exactly that about breaking the fourth wall you have that you have kind of onomatopoeic sound effect words, just the voice itself. Reading Super Ghost, it's almost like either listening to a story with a storyteller right there or watching a film rather than reading words on a page.

Obviously, that was deliberate, but was it as much fun to write as it is to read? It really was, yeah, because we start a lot of the characters. A lot of the characters are born from a voice or just a thing or a name. So we will just sit in a room and workshops probably too grand a word. Don't call it workshopping. It makes us sound like we really think these things through. No, okay, we workshop. We do workshop.

But we just say, okay, who's the baddie? Who do we want it to be? And then we'll start with a voice. And then, like, Nectar was one of our baddies in the first book. And Nektar was sort of a little bit of a Rick Mayall voice, I think, wasn't it? And it's supposed to be a bit silly like this. And he talks with a little bit of a speech impediment like that because he's a wasp.

But he's half man and half wasp and he's a bit stupid. So we just come up with a voice like that. And then suddenly you get the character from that voice voice you know oh i totally get him he's he sounds he sounds all waspy and and frantic but also a bit stupid so yeah dr extraordinary started um initially i guess from a character we had in in kid normal called mr superman who was a sort of i get i washed up superhero but kind of world weary and kind of bored with it. And just another day in the office kind of thing, like a smooth kind of character like that,

who might be hosting, might be doing the rounds and like hosting award shows and stuff. He's just like. An after dinner speaker. After dinner speaker. And then that's when I met Sophie, my wife, my first wife, and that kind of person. So that's who Dr. Extraordinary is.

He's actually really annoyed in the first chapter because when he's trapped inside the giant robot that's about to explode, he complains, like, I've got a reception at the town hall tonight. The mayor's coming, for goodness sake. So this question you kind of answered a little bit but you spent your time on the radio together talking in silly voices and coming up with completely batshit creations for things i presume the writing process is vaguely similar it's you two being idiots in a room together and producing a book yeah that's exactly it once there's a framework, once there is,

and we're really good at essentially having, well, coming up with the story and the basic beginning, middle and end, but also having chapter headings. You have to say that because you're sat in Penguin's offices. You're just being professional so they know that you do it properly, really. We have to have a couple of weeks where we do it properly and we come up with chapter headings and then we fill it properly. And we come up with chapter headings. And then we fill it in.

And that's when the real fun starts. We are suckers for a good chapter title, aren't we? Yeah. Yeah. So we sometimes will, as you sort of block out a film, you know, in like storyboard, we'll often sort of write the titles of the chapters. Like in The Great Dream Robbery, which is the book before this,

it was all about kids going into dreams and trying to rescue Maya maya the lead character's dad who was trapped in a nightmare and it was basically also we could use the chapter title waking dad yes which uh we just worked towards basically which we were inordinately proud of but in terms of what we did on on the radio and what i still do now is you you have to have some sort of framework. Otherwise, it is just a mess. But as long as you've got a strong enough framework to then mess around within it, then you have space to have fun. And actually, you have more fun

and you can be more ridiculous because you've always got a sort of parameter to work within. So that's why the chapter headings are good because we can go off and just go, blah, here's a mad bit. But then you reread it, or our amazing editor, Carmen, will go off and just go, here's a mad bit. But then you reread it or our amazing editor, Carmen, will reread it and go, yeah, you didn't need the extra 500 words at the end of that one. So just squeeze it back in. Well, speaking about writing,

I wanted to ask about writing for this particular age group. Now the book is for kind of the eight to 12 year old range. It's an interesting age with kids, right? Because you're moving from being a child to being a tween and teen. It's a really important time because it's when you really start to lose yourself in a story. But also, you know, speaking as a parent, it's sometimes the time when kids start to lose their reading as well, because you lose that bedtime moment. When they're little, you can sit and read a bedtime story with them,

and it's great, and they love that. And when they go off and read on their own, you do get really lost in a story, but also it's when some kids start to just lose that habit, and it's really easy to lose. So we were really passionate about writing what are hopefully quite grabby stories for that age group. it's when some kids start to just lose that habit and it's really easy to lose. So we were really passionate about writing, you know, what are hopefully kind of quite grabby stories for that age group.

And also what we're really, what we're really strong on, you know, we try to be really strong on is, is having a story that a grownup will enjoy as well and try and keep that sharing a story together moment going for as long as possible, you know, so that even when the kids are sort of you know eight nine ten eleven um they will you know we'd really love it if the if the parents were like i'll come and read a chapter with you you know at night as well so there's plenty of jokes in there for the grown-ups pop culture references that will hopefully keep the grown-ups entertained as

well so what we would really love is what we do love is when people come to the signings and say you know we're reading the story together. So the longer you can keep that going, the better, I think. That age group are, in general, from 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, you tend to be unfiltered with your ideas and you tend to be a bit more fearless and you don't worry too much about being cool. And we love that untapped imagination and that's really great fun revisit you know we we can go and meet all these kids and get some ideas off but not get steal ideas from them but that age group are really fun because they just everything is just

exciting so when we go to their school and we do uh we make the teacher a baddie that's like the funnest thing ever because that is that is really fun and it's sort of unbridled uncynical joy i guess which we really like writing about in the books and we we like um igniting imagine their imaginations too how old are your kids chris i've just got one he's 15 now so he's gcse year at the he's cool now yeah so he doesn't he won't he won't overthink everything too much i've got an 11 year old so we're just but she's she's already too cool to read books with me that's the thing it's really it's really hard to keep that going isn't it and um you know yeah it's it's it's difficult to pick books i mean you know my son because he's 15 he's

you know he he's reading sort of grown-up books now i suppose so i'm giving him some of my favorites from when I was a kid but it's uh it's it's tricky you've got to work really hard as a parent I think to keep that keep that reading habit sometimes you feel like you've got to be quite kind of dictatorial about it go half an hour before bed do it do it do it but you know I think it's something that is it is worth pushing well we do have gentlemen like you to thank for that because I remember being pushed to read books as an 11-year-old, and we certainly didn't at that stage have the sort of books that are funny and that are as good. You know, I remember being told I had to read really serious books,

and it was just like, oh, this is dull. Whereas if you can read Kid Normal or one of your books and have a laugh it's a bit different yeah i think i was given puck of poox hill by rudyard kipling and just thinking like what the hades is this yeah earth is going on i think things have things have moved on really nicely there's some i mean there are some amazing books knocking around some brilliant authors who do tap into that the idea of reading for pleasure because we've all as you said we've all been there and reading can become a chore because it becomes anything that becomes work or school work can become unfun quite quickly and one of the reasons we started up

our teach me a lesson podcast is because it's it's great to learn new things but at school you're sometimes so stuck in a, you must learn this to pass the exam. It doesn't matter if you don't really understand it, just remember the facts and then write them down in a few months time. But actually just learning new things is brilliant. And the same with books. And on that, we always bang this drum and say, there is a book for everybody and you just need that one book that makes you go this is so fun oh my god i had no idea that my brain could go there just from some words so if it is one of our books then that's amazing but there is a book for every kid

somewhere that will make them go oh yeah i love this and it doesn't have to be something that's serious or something that's literary or anything that's too you know like that it can be anything really so magazines and just comics and anything that makes your imagination were is it's fantastic so when you do the events in schools do you play out because you do the audiobooks yourselves don't you and do all the voices and yeah do you do the same in schools do you have a bunch of kids dancing around the assembly hall where you're acting out the characters we sometimes worry that we've left them too keyed up and then we just sort of say we're like we're like we you know our live event is basically you know getting the kids to help us make up make up a story uh so we really try

and fire their imaginations and try and tell them that, you know, creative writing is not a chore, you know, it's something that's brilliant fun. So we make it as silly as possible. We get the teachers involved, you know, as Greg said, sometimes make the, you know, make the teacher into a baddie, which the kids absolutely love, then get them absolutely fired up. So they're completely manic. And then we say, thanks very much for having us, bye. And then like leave them to carry on with the rest of Friday afternoon. So, yeah, the teachers probably hate us quite a lot for that. Sometimes they've said, oh, it's great, they wanted to go back to the class and write stories, which is great,

but we suspect that what they actually wanted to do is go back to the class and pretend that their teacher is still half human, half chicken. That's it, yeah. By the way, we don't make them into baddies as in historical. They're not dictators or sort of racists you know we make them into half half teacher half chicken or silly silly something a bit more plausible okay yeah so basically you have a bunch of teachers who usually they love it when child authors come to speak to the kids but they're like oh no it's greg and to speak to the kids, but they're like, oh, no, it's Greg and Chris.

I keep hearing it. They're coming again. Oh, no. I think the thing to do if we are coming to your school for a visit, just schedule it at the end of the day. Then you can just send them home, and it's the mums and dads that have to reach for the gym. There we go, teachers listening.

Well, a small aside, my daughter goes to a youth club on a Friday night night and they are not daft because there's a tuck shop at the youth club. And the tuck shop only sells sweets. So they're allowed to buy the sweets when they get to youth club, but they're not allowed to eat them until they leave. So at 8.30 tonight, I will have a daughter who is off her tits on flumps. This is just a racket being run by the youth club. Absolutely. You can buy sweets anywhere, but they're just taking a little backhand, aren't they? Yeah.

You buy the sweets and you can't eat them till 8.30, and then there's a bunch of really annoyed parents trying to get their kids to bed, and their kids are just running around. Absolutely swivel-eyed off blackjacks coming home. Yeah, exactly. Outrageous. Outrageous, baby. I thought you were going to say something like the youth club only sells, the tuck shop only sells vegetables or something.

So you do work with the National Literacy Trust to try and get books to kids around the country, to try and get families reading more. You talked a little bit about the importance of, you know, bedtime stories are not just for when kids are little ones, but kind of continue on through. If you could say one thing to parents about, you know, helping to get their kids to read more,

you know, what would it be? Well, I think it was really important what Greg was saying about, you know, don't feel that you've got to pick something that you feel is, you know, terribly worthy or, you know, or terribly improving. You know, any reading is what it's about. You know, you're developing those literary skills. If your kid wants to read, you know, a magazine about football or sport or wants to read, you know, wants to read a comic, you know, wants to read a graphic novel,

you know, there's some amazing graphic novels out there now, you know, it's a real massive boom area, they're brilliant, or wants to read like a book that, you know, you consider might be a little bit young for them or a little bit old for them, you know, don't be hung up on any of that stuff, just try and find a variety of things and just wait and see what they want and some, you know, there's no such thing as a reluctant reader, there's just a kid that hasn't found the right book yet so just keep going and something will something will unlock it at some point but also if there aren't books immediately in the vicinity then there will be something that they enjoy watching and that is a story whether it you know it's a marvel film or whatever it is that is a story that was

committed to paper at some point with words in it so maybe it's as simple as taking an idea from a marvel film of it and then getting them to write a review of it or getting them to write um their about their favorite character or a story about the character they've seen in there so it doesn't have to be a book it just could just it just needs to be a story and the idea of writing your own story will hopefully lead them to go oh well i'm now writing my own story and all these things are just great stories and they're really fun and they're whatever and that could lead them to a book or could just lead them to writing their own stuff so really it's it's much about writing is it is about reading because you can't have one without the other, obviously. And really about sort of unsnobbifying, you know, literature, you know, which always sounds rather grand, doesn't it?

The word literature, printed matter, you know, the National Literacy Trust do. None of us can say literacy. It's too much about just books. Two authors and two journalists and not one of us can say literacy. The National Literacy Trust do amazing work with them, like some kids that have been excluded, and they have really good partnerships with local football teams. Like Burnley are really strong on this.

And they'll get the footballers that the kids really look up to, and we'll sort of partner them and get them to sort of come up with some stories together or do some reading together. And just to kind of keep drumming that message home that, you know, books and reading is not, it's not like a posh thing. It's not a middle-class thing. It's not like something you've got to be frightfully, frightfully clever to do, you know, and you don't have to talk about it in a pretentious way. And it doesn't have to be frightfully improving of the mind, you know, it can just be for fun. And's just getting those words in in your head

and keeping them there because you know when the right words go in they stay there for life my kids school actually did something really bonkers this week they showed it's only a tiny little primary school there's only 200 kids in the whole school and they showed every single child from reception all the way up a picture of an ogre who was crying and had a great big bogey coming out of his nose and then everyone had to write a line of a story about the ogre and then they've put them all together and made this massive story about a snotty ogre it's just that kind of thing isn't it yeah great that's exactly it and also because that's not intimidating write a line of a story it's a great way to start you know you don't have to go you know or how will

i structure it what's the beginning middle of the end what's my what's my hero's motivation here just write a line that's an absolute absolutely great idea because then you know you find i think a lot of kids would find once they've written one line they're like oh and then what happened next they'll know in their head what it was and it's great to write funny things and if your friend reads it back and they find it funny there's nothing better than getting a laugh from somebody in particular, your friends. So you'll be encouraged to maybe write a bit of dialogue with them or act it out and speak it out loud.

And that can just only enhance your confidence as well. I've got a question following on that about being funny. So are y'all pretty ruthless with, with each other when you try something you think it's gonna be really funny in the book and it doesn't work we do we try things out on each other all the time and we will you know pretty quickly if someone that's at the at the keyboard and you just write banana llama department which is which appears in the great dream robbery and chris or i just start laughing you go that that's good and then from banana llama you've got you can just you

just keep spinning off the words like that so yeah we we um we're not ruthless i don't think we just sort of know our editors are quite ruthless aren't they oh yeah who cares about them we had um hannah who edited the the kid normal theories and that were our editor now carmen at puffin the the most the most damning thing that either of them has ever said i think We had Hannah who edited the Kid Normal series and our editor now, Carmen, at Puffin. The most damning thing that either of them has ever said, I think, is when they put notes when we're doing a rewrite, doing edits on the book, and just write something like,

I'm not sure this quite lands. Cutting. Yeah, it's a bit like when Mary Berry says, it's a bit dense. Yeah, says, it's a bit dense. Yeah, right, yeah. What's the other one that Carmen uses? Have another stab at this. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, our former amazing editor at Bloomsbury,

give this a bit of a mull. Yeah, have a mull. Have a mull. Oh, he cuts this. Or are you really, it's like, do you really love this bit oh yeah that happens a lot yeah yeah are you absolutely wedded to this character yeah oh that's harsh but do you do that to each other do you kind of like say no chris he's just not working i think sort of instinctively because i think because we've worked on the radio for so long together,

I think we're both very good at just telling when the other one's just, depending on which one of us happens to be sort of on laptop typing duties, they just pause and doesn't write down the idea. You're going to go, yeah, you hate that, don't you? Yeah, I was just trying to think of... So we've been trying with Superghost, obviously, as with everything, you try and get better every time you do you try something so we're hoping we think we are getting

well we know we are getting better at doing these stories and we're getting better at writing concisely so some of the Kid Normal books were really quite long and that's because we were overwriting bits and we were just kind of formulating in our own heads, I think. And then with Super Ghost, we were really, really hard on each other, just saying, let's just make it as concise as possible and just trim all the fat away. And that's really difficult to do sometimes when you're just in the middle of a flow of a great action scene or an adventure scene. You just go in.

That's too much. You don't need to describe everything that's there. So we were both nudging each other going, yeah, not we don't need that. Just just a little bit, a little bit less. Yeah. And this is actually our shortest one. Not by that much, but we've been trying to make them a bit more concise. It's so difficult, isn't it, to kind of when you when you're in it and you think, oh, but I don't want to leave anything out of what i'm imagining yeah so chris you're a father you're writing children's books do you have veto power over things because you are the official dad no i've got less filter than anyone else i think to be honest i i wrote i think the only line that we had to have cut on the grounds that it would

be horrifying for children which was about in one of the kid only line that we had to have cut on the grounds that it would be horrifying for children which was about in one of the kid normal books when we used to we had a metaphor of like um remember doom weasel and it said he he looked like a he looked like a scary clown that lived in a dumpster and grabbed children as they went past it was like you can't say that it will frighten the kids that frightens the adults, right? Yeah. Have a mull. I'm not sure that metaphor about the scary clown that lives in the dumpster is quite landing. Cut it immediately.

Yeah. No, I think that was the only point where our editor actually wrote, I'm vetoing this on the grounds that it's unseasonable. So the answer to your question, Jen, is no. But I think also a broader point about writing for kids is that we don't really try and we don't want to write down. If anything, you want to write up. And when you don't know a word when you're reading, you should just read through it. And you can go and look it up if you need to or just make it make sense when the rest of the sentence appears.

But we deliberately don't write down and what would an eight-year-old like and then just start writing mr farty pants went to town that day and all that kind of thing it's not it's not like that you can do a story because well as you know kids understand a lot of things a lot more than we give them credit for in fact i was with my 14-year-old niece last night. I picked her up from school. And she said, oh, I gave Bella's book to my best friend. And I was like, how to kill your family for a 14-year-old? I bet they'd love it, though, wouldn't they? Yeah.

So Bella's book has obviously been quite successful this year. And it's gone round my niece's school. And they're only 14. And I was scanning the book in my head thinking it's not really, not really that suitable as a few bits, but yeah, you're right. Kids know a lot of, a lot more than we do give them credit for. So there's no need to write down to them. I guess if you're, if your kids are, or if children in general, if the bad thing they're doing is reading books that are inappropriate,

that's, you know, in the scheme of things. I would like nothing better than for any child of mine to read inappropriate books. Yeah. That's a good, bad thing. A hundred percent. Yeah. Greg,

you recently spoke to the times talking around the idea of kids about reframe. It's all very serious you spoke to them about reframing the conversation around not having children yes well it's a very it's a very serious topic and I think that that's kind of what I was getting at in that piece which was we want to take it really seriously as a as a thing and I guess we've come to the decision at the moment which is you can have a great life with kids you can have a great life without them but you've come to the decision at the moment which is you can have a great life with kids you can have a great life without them but you've got to really really think it through and

and get it as right as you possibly can and don't take it lightly because I think a lot of people some of my friends I think would probably admit that they rushed into it or they just got carried away with it and it's like oh that's the thing to do you have to have a kid now quick have a kid have a kid and some people aren't lucky to have them so the question being not oh you're are you having kids it's like oh my god you're having kids that's amazing and oh you're having you're not having kids that's also amazing and you'll have a great life as well I think that's where our heads are at at the moment but that might change change our minds weekly oh god it's horrific you just it's like you're on a treadmill and you've done step one

and so my whole family was scandalized when I did step two and had the kids before I did step one you can only imagine what great auntie Elsie said to that but it's um it shouldn't just be the automatic thing and I do think a lot of people just go do do do do do do married kids for having kids I mean and you don't really think about it i think my point is really think about it and really be ready for it make sure that you've got everything in place as much as you can i know that you can't plan you know be like we're now ready for kids but really thinking about it is important because it's a huge responsibility you want to make sure that you're you're ready for it in that way sort of mentally and financially and all those sorts of boring things.

But it's okay just to go, well, you don't have to have kids. You don't have to. This is the man who spent a lot of time in school with a lot of kids. Maybe it's just put him off for life. But we get to hang out with some amazing kids, and I've got some brilliant kids in my life. My niece and nephew, a lot of my mates have got kids. And at the moment, that's kind of enough. And I think that's absolutely okay to say that.

Well, it's so interesting. I think, you know, we here at the Netmoms podcast hear a lot about authors of children's books. And I think one of the first things people say is, oh, are they a mom or a dad? But in fact, we all used to be kids. So the idea that writing a children's book is something that you need to be a parent to do is quite an interesting idea. Yeah, yeah. I think children's authors that we met, the uniting factor is not so much that they've all got kids and they're writing for their own kids. I think the uniting factor is that they remember very vividly what it's like being a kid. I know that's definitely true for both of us,

you know, drawing on our experiences for, you know, writing about kids going to school and stuff. You can tell that when we're having conversations about it, we're writing these scenes, we both remember very vividly that, you know, going to school feeling. Yeah. And I think, yeah, that's what, in my experience, kids authors have in common, that they just, you know going to school feeling yeah uh and i think yeah that's what that's what in my experience kids authors have in common that they just you know very very vividly have this have

this sort of really solid kind of technicolor memory of what it's like being eight nine ten eleven years old do you know what's interesting we interviewed derma o'leary oh someone's doing well lovely derma yes toto the ninja cat had just come out the latest one and he said exactly the same thing he was saying how he can just remember really vividly bits of being a kid that were really rubbish yeah and he wanted to write about those bits when they were good for other kids and I think that's really lovely. Oh, it is, yeah. But all those memories were unlocked as soon as we started writing Kid Normal.

And we thought about what our school lives were like. There's a lot of both of us in Kid Normal, more than any of the other books, actually, because we've all been the outsider on the first day of school. We've all been scared of the bigger kids. We've all been scared of subjects we didn't understand. We've all been scared of PE teachers who've all been scared of subjects we didn't understand we've all been scared of put a p teachers who bully you you know all those all those sorts of things

they are they come flooding back to you there's a bit in kid normal where murph the main character is dropped off at the early drop desk that's because that happened to me because my mum dropped me early and i had to sit sort of with the receptionist um sort of sorting out all the registers or whatever in the morning. So you get you get a unique perspective because you see the school starting. So you see the first teachers arriving. You get to see who's late, who comes in in a huff, who comes in with their umbrellas or faffing around. And then you see the first kids arriving. So you get to see the school from a different perspective when you do that sort of thing. So that really helps. So I think we were both probably quite good observers when we were kids and we just sort of soaked it all up and I

can remember it really well we went to see a secondary school we're at that dreadful stage of viewing secondary schools and it was just I was just taken back the minute I walked into this secondary school it was just like you could just remember people spitting chewing gum and sticking under the desks and all the other stuff that went on at secondary school I was like oh my god it doesn't change at all it's exactly the same but don't they tart it up for the for the open day we found when we went around the um we went around my son's secondary school and everything everything's spotless and it's like it's like, it's all the absolutely amazing Dairy League kids who are like,

hello, welcome to our wonderful school. We'll come and show you around. And then we went to look around the science labs and there was a science teacher giving a demonstration and he set a five pound note on fire and then put it out again and like did basically a magic trick with chemicals. It was like, if you come and study science here,

this is what, well, I've checked with my son now who's now in his GCSE year. Never done what... Well, I've checked with my son now. He's now in his GCSE year. Never done that. Well, last night they set fire to a whole string of jelly babies. I've never been to any open day where anything was set fire. My daughter, we are obviously investigating the wrong schools. Yeah, we were looking for a specialist fire school, obviously. It's so interesting, the memories that get unlocked.

You talking about them cleaning the school i remember vividly they would use the floor buffer to make sure the floor was absolutely spotless and it smelled like polish didn't it yeah and you would just be like you want to walk in there when the kids are coming around going it's not like this normally it doesn't smell like this they are pretending and And do you know what you never see? The Van de Graaff generator again. No, never. The Van de Graaff generator always comes out on an open day

and you never see that ever again. They go, put your hands on it, make your hair go up. Well, that never happened again. No Van de Graaff is generated. No. So it's all those sorts of things. They were saying, oh, form time. Form time is when we have quiet reflection.

And I could hear my husband behind me kind of sniggering away while we were having this tour. And I was thinking, and he literally, you know, when you get the giggles and you can't stop, and he was in pieces. And he was like, I just remember in our time, John O'Stanbridge asked us to push him on a wheelie chair, and he went straight through the wall and into the other classroom they're like form time is quiet reflection my husband's there thinking of a kid going through the walls so do y'all each have little notebooks of uh kind of crazy memories

that pop up as you're kind of brainstorming to write that you want to use for future books that we can any tidbits we can expect to see we've actually got a page of stories that we will never write haven't we oh to see those i think we may have been on our way back from a literary event we were possibly having a glass of wine on the train we came up with a list of book titles that we will never be able to use like um well bus dog is one that we would love to at some point yeah it's about a dog drive dog that drives a bus that's as far as we got we just thought it was a great title yeah lazy book ideas um the little drummer pig yeah there was one that was called stop that's not my grandma oh yeah yeah that's quite a good one um which i thought we could you know if we

completely run out of it is just going to lean back on these lazy ones the crying wine waiter yeah um the adventures of the Adventures of the Fart Banana was another one. See, I'd quite like to read some of these, gents. Can you just crack a few of those out and we'll read them and see whether they're good or bad?

Sure, yeah, no problem. That'll be book 20. We'll get straight on it. Well, on that note, can I go and have a gin now, please? Yes, you can. You must be overdue for one. Come on.

Yeah, you're overdue with gin. Thank you so much for spending your afternoon chatting silly things with us. It's very nice to meet you and we're very much looking forward to reading your book. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much. Thank you.