I write because...

Currently re-living the early Eighties via the twinkling and mostly optimistic eyes of Michael Palin and his second diary collection Halfway to Hollywood (1980-1988). As I read the entries from 1980 to 1982 it struck me that this was the same time period covered by Sue Townsend in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. And, lo and behold, Townsend appears in Palin's diary on November 24th, 1982, when they both attended and gave speeches at a Young Publishers' meeting. Townsend opened her speech with a brilliant line: "I can't talk, that's why I write." Interesting to read that her house in Leicester was "within stone-throwing distance of the house in which Joe Orton was born."