"Kids are very wise, I think. I don’t know when it is we become stupid."
If you were to look up "Renaissance Man" in your favourite reference guide, it might just have a picture of Adrian Edmondson beside the definition. Isn’t he that guy from…? Yes, he was Vyvyan in The Young Ones. And Eddie Hitler in Bottom. He’s also the lead singer in a folk band, a critically acclaimed author, a Celebrity MasterChef winner and, now, a children’s author. A children’s author? The loud, obnoxious Baron von Richtoven from Blackadder Goes Forth? Really? How did that happen? Edmondson spoke to Ryan Tubridy this morning about his debut children’s book, Tilly and the Time Machine.
"A child with a brilliant mind moved in next door to me… one of those kids you go into a staring contest with before you know it’s started."
When young children moved in next door, Edmondson thought he’d read bedtime stories for them. He’d done audiobooks of Roald Dahl, after all, he was really good at it. But the precocious 7-year old girl and her two brothers didn’t want The BFG, they’d heard it before. They didn’t want The Wind in the Willows or The Hobbit, either because they’d heard them as well. "So," Edmondson thought, "I’ll write one of my own. You haven’t heard that, have you?"
"I found it’s somehow easier to write about adult themes for children, than it is for adults."
Although Tilly and the Time Machine is a funny book with, as Edmondson puts it, "its fair share of bottom gags", it’s basically a book about grief. After her mother’s death, Tilly’s dad invents a time machine and asks her where she wants to go. Back to ancient Rome? Or maybe visit the Egyptians? Queen Victoria even? No – Tilly wants to go back to her sixth birthday when her mother was alive.
Tilly and the Time Machine is published by Puffin Books. You can listen back to the full interview here.
