With titles like The Ladybird Book of the Mid-life crisis, The Ladybird Book of the Hipster and The Ladybird Book of the Hangover, it’s safe to say comedy writers Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris have made an impact with their take on the original Ladybird books for children. They joined guest-host Dave Fanning on The Ryan Tubridy Show to discuss the latest books in the series.

Dave started by asking the duo to clarify how many new books are coming out. Is it correct that there are 11?

“Yeah, I’m afraid it is. A nice round 11.”

In explaining the concept behind the books, Hazeley and Morris told Dave that they have carried on the idea of the informative books for children that explained how things worked. Only now instead of teaching you how a car works, they’re teaching you things that adults need to know.

“We’ve pretended that they never stopped publishing those and they grew up with you and now they’re explaining what a ‘hipster’ is and what a mid-life crisis is and how a baby works. Things that grownups find confusing…They’re illustrated entirely with illustrations from the original books bent wildly out of context.“

Hazeley and Morris went through the archive of approximately 12,000 original Ladybird book illustrations, taking great joy in cataloguing a selection in a folder simply titled “What?” for those they found confusing.

“There’s a picture of a huge ocean liner imposed on Trafalgar Square…it was meant to show you how big a boat was in comparison with a city. But we’ve said that it’s Bruce Springsteen going out to buy some Marmite.”

Dave asked if the success of the books took them by surprise. They were unanimous.

“We’ve had a bestseller before, what had been called a bestseller. And that shifted about 60,000 copies. And these are heading towards 5 million at the moment. And it just shows a) how much people love being reminded of Ladybird and also, how hard it is to buy presents for people”.

Was it a struggle to get Ladybird to play along, Dave wondered? According to the guys, it all worked out pretty quickly.

“Within 5 hours [of pitching the idea] they’d given us the keys to the archive and said ‘Off you go. But don't do 1, do 8.’…There was a sense of being allowed to take a national treasure and try to not smash it into a wall.”

Listen back to the full interview with Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris on The Ryan Tubridy Show here.