A career in writing didn’t come easily to Adrian Mole creator Sue Townsend, she tells Laura Davis

IT’S the name that comes to Sue Townsend first – a name in place of a face or figure, which sums up a character in a simple pair of words.

So it was with young Nigel Mole, the 13¾-year-old diarist of Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

Hang on a minute – Nigel Mole?

But that’s who he was, at least while he remained undiscovered – the first three months of his diaries discarded in an old refrigerator box.

The author describes her rebirth as a professional writer as “coming out of the closet” but in fact it was her manuscripts that had been hidden in the closet – in the cupboard under-the-stairs to be exact.

“I knew it wasn’t good enough,” she says of her secret stash of work.

Although she had been writing since she left school at the age of 14, it wasn’t until she was in her 30s that Townsend turned it into a career.

Persuaded by her second husband to join a writing group, which secretly submitted one of her plays to a local theatre. Womberang, starring 12 women and one man, won a Thames Television competition and it was finally time for Nigel Mole to come out from under the stairs.