I sometimes get round to thinking about why I bother to write. I had always thought that I could write something that people would enjoy reading, so I toyed with all sorts of ideas about disaster scenarios, ghostly tales, heroic deeds etc. and none of them inspired to the point of actually making me sit down and write. Then my best mate got his leg caught up in the rope around the dinghy he was trying to get into and we laughed about him floundering about all day. It occurred to me that we were real life versions of the characters in Last of the Summer Wine and that I should write about things that I know best - my friends, family, and yours truly. After all I had no shortage of silly happenings to wrie about! So I wrote the first book and the publisher said, "It looks like you have a book, but..............have you used anyone's real name?" After I had answered in the affirmative I was shot down in flames. "You can't do it!", she said.
OK, I thought, so if I couldn't use real names, how can I think of names for everyone without them sounding silly? Terry Wogan's breakfast show was on the radio, and the names that his correspondents used gave me the answer, Thank you everyone, the Seymore Butt's, Ophelia Legge's of this world, you gave me a book I could actually publish!
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