A Mole in my life

I'm clearly not going to get any more work done tonight; my bag-on has put paid to that. And if you're reading this Loz, it's too fucking late to go to the pub now anyway, so don't start!

I've just been reading Sue Townsend's True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, and thanks to the bag-on, it's made me all emotional. I have known and loved Adrian Mole since I was nine years old. He has aged quicker than I have, thanks to the fact that he was already 32 when I started reading them, but I've sort of grown up with him. I've watched his vain attempts to put himself across as an enigmatic intellectual, I've seen him get married and divorced a couple of times, father children, work his way through terrible jobs, had the most almighty calamities befall him, develop cancer and become a grandad. I weep for his sense of loss as he grows older and realised he's achieved nothing of what he wanted when he was 13 and three quarters. And he's got me through years and years of my own teenage, 'intellectual' angst. He fuelled my ambition to be a writer. He inspired me to write countless fictional diaries, poetry and even the odd 'opus' of my own, grandiosely calling it all 'manuscripts'. He's kept me awake in bed laughing till the early hours in a way few other men ever have. I cried when Bianca left him, I cried when his Grandma died, I cried as I read through The Prostrate Years – but oh, how I laughed. When he delicately enquired of Nigel what the worst thing about being blind is, and Nigel snapped “I can't fucking see!” in reply, I laughed for whole minutes and woke my sister up.

The most beautiful thing about the way I've read these books is that every time I've re-read the teenage years, as I've got older, wiser and better-read, I've discovered one of Townsend's wily, ironic jokes. After Adrian reads Animal Farm, he innocently writes in his diary: “I cried when Boxer was taken to the vets. From now on I will treat pigs with the contempt they deserve. I am boycotting pork of all kinds.” The entry was lost on me aged nine. Then I grew up, read Animal Farm, learned what the words 'contempt' and 'boycotting' mean, and found it all the more hilarious.

Which is why I'm going to lend the books to my sister, who's 10. She'll love them for their simple style and for Townsend's brutally accurate account of being a teenager – and of course, she'll love them for Adrian himself, who despite it all is one of the most loveable characters in English literature. Then when she grows up she'll know why they're so good for adults too. Read these books please.