Adrian Mole: Diary of a Provincial Man

Self-obsession

Friday, February 2, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire

I was sitting in the kitchen with a chicken noodle Cuppa-Soup this evening, waiting for The Archers to begin, when to my astonishment I heard my name mentioned on Radio 4. I turned up the volume and listened in growing horror to a «trail» of a television programme featuring a man called Adrian Mole, a former offal chef whose family home is in Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

This TV Mole has a mother called Pauline and a father called George. This cannot be mere coincidence — somebody has published my life and is exploiting it for commercial reasons. I immediately rang my agent's solicitor, Peter Elf, and left a message. The BBC must be prevented from broadcasting this series. Surely I have intellectual copyright on my own life?

I was unable to concentrate on The Archers, and thus missed a strand of an important storyline: will Kate go back to South Africa with her black lover and take her first-born child?

Saturday, February 3

Several people, including Pandora, have rung up to enquire about the Mole TV series. Pandora was outraged, though I could tell that she is rather flattered that she is being played by Helen Baxendale.

Monday, February 5

I rang Greg Dyke's office at 7am this morning, but the slug-a-bed was not at his bed. Do we licence-payers award a full-time salary to a man who apparently works part-time? It would appear so.

Mr Elf warned me against taking out an injunction against the BBC. He said, "It would be a David and Goliath situation." I pointed out to him that little David was in fact the victor against the giant Goliath. Elf replied, "In my opinion, David struck lucky with that stone. Goliath obviously had a very thin skull."

Tania Braithwaite brought last week's Radio Times around this morning. Inside, was a "film-set diary" purported to have been written by a bloke calling himself Adrian Mole. This Mole bloke was also upset that his life was being exploited.

A friend of Tania's in publishing had told her that an old hack called Sue Townsend had been trying for years to publish the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole, claiming that they were fiction. She showed me a piece of the manuscript. I read in increasing astonishment as details of my private life were revealed. How does this woman know so much about me? Is she tapping my phone? Has she bugged my house? Tania said that Townsend grew bitter after going on an Arvon poetry course led by Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, where Henri told her that she was not a poet and never would be after she handed in a poem called A Contemplation Regarding Earwig Defecation:

How to measure earwig poo?

How to know how much they do?

Are there scales to measure it

Those tiny piles of earwig shit?

Townsend then made a hysterical denunciation of modern poetry and ran out of the class and down to the river. She threatened to throw herself in unless Adrian Henri sent her earwig poem to Bloodaxe with a recommendation that they commission a thick volume of her verse. Adrian Henri came to the opposite bank and shouted across the river, "Throw yourself in and give us all a break."

Townsend has hated all men called Adrian since that day. AA Gill is another of her obsessions. Is she the reason my own literary endeavours have come to nought?

Tuesday, February 6

Leicester-born painter Adrian Hemming has fled the country after hearing that Townsend is an admirer of his work. "I heard that she was planning to buy one of my 'wave' pictures and hang it in her bathroom," he said from his hiding place. "I must protect my name."