The comedy star turned children's author talks about his new book 'Tilly and the Time Machine'

<p>Ade Edmonson may be best known for his roles in The Young Ones and Bottom, but he is now releasing his first children&rsquo;s fiction book called <em>Tilly and the Time Machine.</em></p><p>The book tells the story of young, inquisitive girl Tilly, whose Dad creates a time machine and all Tilly want to do is go back in time to her sixth birthday when she ate too many cupcakes and her mummy was still there…</p><p>We chatted to Ade about writing the book, who inspired the main character and where he would go if he could use a time machine…</p><p><center><img alt="tilly-and-the-time-machine" class="ci-image ci-original" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/tilly-and-the-time-machine_GL?scl=1" style="width: 400px;"></center></p><p><h2>Who is the character of Tilly based on?</h2>A friend of mine has three young children and they moved in next door. There&rsquo;s two boys and a young girl and she&rsquo;s the inspiration for Tilly. She&rsquo;s a very direct 7 year old. You&rsquo;ll find yourself in a staring competition with her before you know you&rsquo;ve started one. She&rsquo;s very funny. I offered her dad a drink once and she said, ‘now you&rsquo;re going to drink beer and start laughing and nobody will have said anything funny&rsquo;. She&rsquo;s got a bluntness which is endearing.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Where do you write?</h2>I have a study, which is like a man cave with lots of maps on the wall, lots of instruments, toys; lots of things to play with. It&rsquo;s where I spend most of my days actually even when I&rsquo;m not working.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Where did the idea for Tilly come from?</h2>When they moved in next door I thought I could write a story about these kids. I was looking after them one night and I thought I&rsquo;d read them some Roald Dahl but they said, ‘we&rsquo;ve heard all those&rsquo;. So I thought I&rsquo;d better start making one up.</p><p><img alt="tilly-and-the-time-machine1" class="ci-image ci-original" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/tilly-and-the-time-machine1_GL?scl=1" style="width: 600px;"></p><p><h2>Is Tilly like any other famous fictional characters?</h2>You try not to copy characters but a lot of kids books, well the ones I like, involve kids who are faced with something to fix that they&rsquo;d usually have adults help them with. Things like Emil and the Detectives and most of the Grimm stories involve kids being up against it.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Do you prefer writing adult or children&rsquo;s fiction?</h2>I&rsquo;ve been trying to write a second adult book for years and doing this project kind of broke the spell on that. I found I could write about adult stuff much more easily in a kids book than in an adult book. This book is about how you deal with grief, which is a present thing as you get older, lots of people start to die. I&rsquo;ve been able to tackle it much better in this form than in adult form where it can become a bit self regarding and pompous.</p><p>I thought a character like Tilly could talk about it much more easily. I&rsquo;ve noticed that adults find it very difficult to talk about death. Bizarre isn&rsquo;t it. I don&rsquo;t know if we used to be able to do it &ndash; maybe the Victorians were better at it. We don&rsquo;t talk about it nowadays; everyone clams up and talks about the weather whereas Tilly is more on the nose. She says, ‘why haven&rsquo;t we got any photos up?&rsquo;</p><p> </p><p><h2>Do you prefer writing on your own or collaboratively?</h2>Both. I&rsquo;m writing a play at the minute with Nigel Planer and I enjoy that, but I think if you&rsquo;re writing fiction it&rsquo;s hard to do with someone else. Anything that involves two people talking like a play or TV comedy you sort of inhabit the two characters and do it that way.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Who did you get to read the book?</h2>I wrote the first draft very quickly in about three weeks and had people read it. The kids I mentioned read it and they wrote little book reports. My youngest daughter, who is 26, read it at most stages &ndash; she was a good sounding board.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Whose books did you read growing up?</h2>My favourite book as a kid was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It&rsquo;s about a boy who receives a magic tollbooth, drives through it in a little pedal car and goes to the Kingdom of Wisdom. It&rsquo;s the first time I learnt about word play &ndash; at one point they&rsquo;re sitting in the car and it won&rsquo;t go and the duke says, ‘be very quiet, for it goes without saying&rsquo;, and they become silent and the car drives. I remember he jumps to conclusions as well, and jumps to the island of conclusions.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Whose novels do you most enjoy now?</h2>I generally read textbooks and encyclopedias. I&rsquo;ve started reading Thomas Hardy which is a land I didn&rsquo;t know about. I didn&rsquo;t realise how modern he is and how funny he is. It&rsquo;s just very human stuff; how people fall in and out of love and how they don&rsquo;t say anything. The stuff they get really badly wrong on Eastenders.</p><p> </p><p><h2>Do you want to write more children&rsquo;s books?</h2>Yes the second one is nearly finished. It&rsquo;s about a little boy called Henry who runs away with a talking horse &ndash; a Shetland pony who is very cross and sort of Edwardian. He talks in old fashioned language and says things like ‘gadzooks&rsquo;.</p><p> </p><p><h2>What age is the book aimed at?</h2>For the kids next door &ndash; around age 7.</p><p><img alt="tilly-and-mum" class="ci-image ci-original" src="https://ui3.assets-asda.com/dm/tilly-and-mum_GL?scl=1" style="width: 500px;"></p><p><h2>If you could travel back in time, where would you go?</h2>I&rsquo;d quite like to go back to my own teens and say the right thing and correct all the bits that I said that were stupid. That&rsquo;s how the book started actually - Tilly was originally just going to use the time machine to work out how to defeat the bullies on the way back from school.</p><p> </p><p><h2>What specific era would you like to revisit?</h2>There&rsquo;s a series of landscape paintings by early explorers that you can see in New York &ndash; they&rsquo;re vistas of virgin territory and I&rsquo;d quite like to go back to that. They&rsquo;re pioneers in 1600&rsquo;s America.</p><p> </p><p><h2>If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?</h2>An interesting conundrum &ndash; If you go back and change something then the future wouldn&rsquo;t be the same as it was. I spent quite a few days puzzling over how time travel could work, and the truth is, it can&rsquo;t.</p><p><em>Tilly and the Time Machine is available to buy in your <a href="http://storelocator.asda.com/#!/" target="_blank">local Asda store</a></em></p>

We chat to Ade Edmondson

By Asda Good Living,5th May 2017

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