How did your background shape your attitude to life?
I can see the injustice that poverty brings, and my books reflect that. They are anti-establishment, anti-posh and anti-royalty.
As Primo Levi, the Jewish Holocaust survivor, said: “It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege.”
Were you encouraged at school?
No. It was brutal. I was caned at the age of four for playing with a toy when I should have been learning my times tables.
When I left school at 18 with good qualifications, I was sent for work experience down a coal mine. Nobody suggested I should try for university. My parents didn’t know what university was but my teachers should have done. For quite a few years I felt inferior.
What was your first job?
Somebody came round the classrooms saying there was a job going as a management trainee at North Eastern Electricity Board at £30 a month.
I got it and they sent me round every department studying what each did, so I could manage them later. But I learnt what each department did in a day, so they gave me filing for the rest of the fortnight. I’d stare at the ceiling and think, “Is this all there is?”
What was your toughest time financially?
After a year at the electricity board, I quit to study drama at Sunderland College. I graduated in 1968 and got a job as a drama teacher, earning £48 a month. After four years I was promoted to head of drama at a comprehensive in Sunderland.
But I hated teaching so in 1972 I took a job as a professional actor with the Breconshire Theatre Company, performing at schools and village halls, with a small teaching element on the side. I barely scraped a living so I rented a cheap flat in Brecon with my fellow actors. I had £1 a day to spend on food.
How did you become a writer?
Knowing we had to perform a children’s show in schools that autumn, the company asked me to write a script over the summer holidays. This became The Custard Kid, inspired by the cowboy films I’d watched in the cinema as a boy.
Two years later I picked up a library book called How to Write A Book and Get Published. It made me realise I could turn my play into a children’s novel.
