Netmums - Jacqueline Wilson
Transcript
00:00:00 Wendy
Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode. We're recording this one quite a long way before you guys are gonna be listening to it. In fact, it's the last week of the school summer term for us. And it is a big week for Alison and I.
There's all the emotions going on in our houses. Alison's twins are leaving preschool this week, and my daughter is leaving primary school this week, so there's tears and there's hormones and there's milestones.
But I think I might have had it easier than you, Alison, as my walls and my shutters remain unscathed, please tell please tell us.
00:00:37 Alison
Yes. Yeah, my 4 year olds who are going through all the emotions at leaving preschool and, a starting primary school soon decided to express their emotions with a crayon, a red crayon and my lovely pink walls in the living room. They got artistic and yeah, I had to try not to be too crossed because I know that it's all the emotions that they're they're feeling at the moment.
I just got the fairy liquid and a sponge out and it took me a good hour of scrubbing, but I got it off.
00:01:04 Wendy
A mother's love knows no bounds.
Tell us who we have on the pod, please, Alison.
00:01:11 Alison
I am thrilled that today we are joined by author Dame Jacqueline Wilson. She has written more than 110 books, including the hugely popular Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather stories.
Which have both been turned into CBBC series.
Jacqueline is a former children's laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame over 40 million of her books have been sold in the UK, and they've been translated into 34 different languages. Jacqueline's latest book, The Best Sleep Over in the World, is a sequel to her bestselling sleepovers book which she wrote 22 years ago. Welcome to the podcast, Jacqueline.
00:01:53 Jacqueline
Hi, Alison. Hi, Wendy. It's good to be talking to you.
00:01:58 Wendy
Thank you for joining us.
00:01:59 Wendy
Now there's no two ways about it, Jacqueline, you are a living legend to children and grown-ups. Those of us who read your books as children. What's it like being so much of a part of the daily life and growing up for so many?
00:02:17 Jacqueline
I think it's wonderful. I never expected.
My books to be at all popular. In fact, I didn't even think they'd ever get published and for a while I had about 10 years, maybe more when I'd written books, I'd had them published. Nobody had really heard of me. You know, you go into the local chain store and you'd look rather hopefully at the W's. None of my books. But then I think it was the story of Tracy Beaker that first made a bit of an impact
00:02:46 Wendy
just a bit, just a little bit.
00:02:49 Jacqueline
It wasn't until several years later.
And the television series started that suddenly everything became wonderful and.
I, I really haven't quite still caught up with the the loveliness of it because I wanted to be a writer since I was six years old.
And then when I was going to school, I used to walk about half an hour to school by myself. Children did in my day. I used to pretend that I was being interviewed and being asked about my books.
And ask what it was like to be a writer, and I fantasise so much about it that when it actually started to happen, it was as if I was still making it up. And even now I'm always so touched and thrilled if if somebody comes up to me and said “ohh, you make my childhood” or some some little girl comes up shyly “ I Like your books.” I mean, it's just everything I've ever dreamt of.
00:03:44 Alison
And which is the book or character? You know that people speak to you about more than others, like a character or a book that has resonated with your audience more.
00:03:53 Jacqueline
I think there are three No 4.
Tracy Beaker, inevitably, although many children seem to think that I've written the entire television series all the way through, all by myself. Hetty Feather, which my Victorian foundling book, and that seemed to go down well. They light the girls series about 3 girls when they're 13 and lots of women said how much they enjoyed sort of identifying with these girls and pertinently, they love sleepovers and it's it's been a steady seller all the way along the line, which has been wonderful for me. And that's why I decided that it might be fun to revisit those little girls, both Daisy and her sister Lily and the horrible Chloe who tries to spoil everything for everyone. Because so many children have a thing about sleepovers and enjoy them or have been In tears have to be returned at midnight because they're homesick or whatever. And then they’re a big thing in many children's lives.
00:05:17 Wendy
So and in many.
Lives, yeah, fairly recently enjoyed a sleepover with 4 11 year-olds.
00:05:23 Jacqueline
Oh my goodness.
00:05:25 Wendy
Ohh, it's noisy, Jacqueline. Yeah, it's really noisy.
00:05:26 Alison
It's a lot.
00:05:29 Jacqueline
Well, my own daughter, she had manageable sleepovers and that she just had at most a friend and the friend, sister and her got together. And that was so much easier. Because when she was young, we lived in a very small flat and really, you know, didn't didn't she didn't have a a, a television or anything in her room. And because I'm talking about long ago, nobody was clamouring for a mobile and there were no sort of children's iPads or anything. So they had to make their own fun. But even that was a bit of a challenge. I wanted everybody to enjoy themselves but little girls get very overexcited at times, don't they? I'm sure boys do too, but somehow it seems simpler with boys. Maybe i’m being, tremendously sexist, but it's the wanting to put on makeup and it's the telling secrets. And then somebody's laughing at what somebody has confessed.
This sort of thing that seems predominantly a female thing.
00:06:36 Wendy
, I think you're right.
00:06:37 Alison
That's so true.
00:06:38 Wendy
Right now it must be the question you dread, cause it's probably like picking a favourite child, but do you have a favourite book or do you have a favourite character?
00:06:48 Jacqueline
Actually, I think one of my favourite characters is a boy called Biscuits who's been in three of my books and I like him because.
00:06:58 Jacqueline
He never lets things get him down. He's cheerful, he's funny, and he's written about by other characters, and yet he's always a friend to them. Plus he's very good at cooking, baking in particular. So I was always thought if one of my characters.
00:07:18 Jacqueline
Became real well, I wouldn't wish Tracy to be real fond of her as I am. I think she'd be a bit much, and I I wouldn't want to resurrect Hetty Feather from the past because she's a bit high spirited, too. Biscuits is kind. I need bake me cakes. That would be wonderful.
00:07:38 Wendy
It's a good reason. It's funny. I love it.
00:07:38 Alison
I love that it really is it.
00:07:41 Alison
Really is like Jacqueline. You worked on Jackie magazine years ago, and I remember reading Jackie annuals that I bought for 10 pence in a jumble sale back in the 80s. Is it true that they named the magazine after you?
00:07:55 Jacqueline
That's what they told me. I went up to DC.
00:07:59 Jacqueline
Dump since in Dundee when I was only 17 they started advertising for short stories for a brand new full colour teenage magazine.
00:08:09 Jacqueline
Been and I was desperate to be a writer. My mum had made me go to do a secretarial course at the local tech. I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to be a sort of junior secretary. I wasn't very good at shorthand and typing. I wanted to be a writer, but as my mum said, well, that's not a proper job, is it? And.
00:08:30 Jacqueline
Who published your books? Yeah, she.
00:08:32 Jacqueline
Wasn't really the most supportive mum in the world.
00:08:34 Jacqueline
And so I saw this advert for teenage writers. And so I I wrote a story and sent it off to the box office number. I can't imagine how. How sort of confident that was really cause I was quite shy. But anyway, I had to go and and after writing several stories they offered me a job up in Dundee.
00:08:56 Jacqueline
Which was a bit of a challenge and I worked on various different women's magazines whilst Jackie was being develop.
00:09:04 Jacqueline
And then every Friday I had to go and see Mr Cuthbert and Mr Tate, who were the the head of women and children's publishing, and they were just asking me how I was doing because I was probably the youngest journalist there and and then they said well.
00:09:24 Jacqueline
Magazines coming out in two or three months time, and they say, guess what? We've named it after you. It's gonna be called Jackie and I was thrilled to bits, however.
00:09:35 Jacqueline
Many, many, many years later, DC Thompson's decided to do their very own Jacqueline Wilson magazine, which was wonderful, and it ran for 12 years. But very sadly, it doesn't happen anymore, much to my dismay, and I got to meet the editor of Jackie.
00:09:55 Jacqueline
Very elderly now. Sadly, he's now died and he said no, it wasn't named after you. It was a sort of corporate decision.
00:10:04 Jacqueline
And I don't know. I like to think it was named after me. It's it's a very special thing to boast about.
00:10:11 Alison
Yeah, it really is. It really is. Let's just, let's just all assume that it was named after you, yes.
00:10:15 Wendy
Yes, please agreed. So we have lots of mums and dads on the podcast, Jacqueline, and we often talk about juggling work and parenthood. Now you became a mum in 1967.
00:10:31 Wendy
But obviously you.
00:10:31 Wendy
Were still juggling being a mum and working. How was it different?
00:10:36 Wendy
Doing that juggle back then.
00:10:38 Jacqueline
It was a challenge I.
00:10:42 Jacqueline
Didn't have much backup from my husband, but even if he'd been willing, he was a policeman and working shift work. So I not only had the bringing up of our daughter mostly by myself, but I had whenever he was on nights to try and keep.
00:11:01 Jacqueline
Emma's quite quiet, so she didn't disturb him. It was a very, very old fashioned sort of way. I was the one that did the shopping, the cooking, the washing, the ironing, the housework, the amusing Emma. I mean, his job was to play with her for 5 minutes, get her totally over, excited, and then sit down and say, well, I'm gonna have a bit of peace.
00:11:23 Jacqueline
Me paper.
00:11:25 Jacqueline
Ohh question one of those and and so I had to be quite organised.
00:11:31 Jacqueline
Emma was a baby that cried a lot. She had bad eczema, so probably she was feeling very itchy and all the rest of it because I was a very young mum, though only 21 and didn't really have much backup. I worried about it terribly and and I didn't have a very.
00:11:51 Jacqueline
Helpful. Sort of.
00:11:53 Jacqueline
She wasn't exactly a social worker. I don't know quite what she was. District nurse. Maybe she came in occasionally, but she wasn't encouraging. She, she said. Ohh, you've got baby the wrong way round or. Ohh it's that nappy rash. You're not washing the nappies properly. All all this sort of thing. So it was. It was quite tough.
00:12:13 Jacqueline
But I was.
00:12:14 Jacqueline
Thrilled to bits to be a mum.
00:12:16 Jacqueline
Although at times you know you do feel like throwing your baby out the window when you've done everything for them and they still shriek at you. But that time did pass, and at long last I got this stage room.
00:12:29 Wendy
He made it to adulthood.
00:12:32 Jacqueline
When I could, I mean, you know what it's like when you feel I cannot live without having one night of sleep because it's just so, so difficult. So I'm fully aware of just how difficult it is to be a mum. But what I used to do, she used.
00:12:50 Jacqueline
To if I was very lucky, from about 12:00 to 1:30, Emma would sleep, and when she was a baby, that was my time. When I wrote, didn't bother about eating. Reading whatever just wrote because that was important. And then?
00:13:10 Jacqueline
If if she went to.
00:13:13 Jacqueline
Sleep about half nine or so at night. Exhausted. I'd write a bit then and in between. I'd be thinking up what else I was going to be writing. Then she got into nursery school when she was 3, just in the mornings, so I would hair down to the.
00:13:33 Jacqueline
Nursery school, which is about a mile away.
00:13:37 Jacqueline
Rush back and then for a good two hours would write solidly and then exactly and in actual fact, that was wonderful training because I don't ever though I'm crossing my fingers, suffer from writer's block because I didn't have time for that luxury. I had to get that bit of writing done.
00:13:57 Jacqueline
And it also meant I developed a habit of writing every single day, which I have now, so it might only be a little bit. But I do get something done so that that was the way I started. Then it was total delight when she got to.
00:14:13 Jacqueline
Be about four.
00:14:14 Jacqueline
Because she like craning, she liked playing with her dolls, and so she could do her little bit of playing by herself while I wrote, and then we could go out to the park or do this, or do that. I mean, it's easy, in a way.
00:14:35 Jacqueline
Being right to her because you can pick and choose your own hours, but now many women have found, although working from home can be a nightmare, particularly if you've got several children. I only had the 1:00, but you can sort things around and get things done just.
00:14:49 Jacqueline
Quickly, when you've got a moment, however, I have to say I am not a house proud person I.
00:14:56 Jacqueline
Mean it was it.
00:14:57 Jacqueline
Was never dirty, but it was always very untidy and if things weren't absolutely wonderfully ironed, I didn't care. Emma didn't care. The husband did care.
00:15:11 Jacqueline
But there were times when I said, well, I had your.
00:15:12 Jacqueline
Own blooming.
00:15:13 Alison
Shirt. Absolutely.
00:15:16 Alison
You're making me.
00:15:17 Alison
Feel so much better about the mess in my house right now. I feel like if Jacqueline Wilson says it's OK, then it must be OK.
00:15:24 Jacqueline
That is too short.
00:15:27
It really is.
00:15:27 Wendy
Certainly too short for ironing.
00:15:28 Jacqueline
Yes. And with children in the house, it's almost impossible to keep the house really tidy. I mean, there are so many things, particularly young children, toddlers, even babies, that cruel. It's surprising.
00:15:44 Jacqueline
Now, within 10 minutes, every single toy can get out that that I remember. Emma particularly adored tearing up newspapers. And so sometimes just at the wrong time when somebody might be coming, there would be heaps of torn up newspapers all over the floor.
00:16:00 Jacqueline
No, you you certainly didn't come to my house to expect it to be House Beautiful, but hopefully it was a good place for for children to come and I never minded. I wouldn't have liked colouring on the walls, but we did have finger painting.
00:16:21 Jacqueline
In the kitchen, and certainly my my walls did not go unscathed and sometimes and and this is a dreadful thing to admit. But Emma was particularly partial to those round trees, fruit gums.
00:16:34 Jacqueline
And in desperation, if I had something desperately important to do, I would give her a few and she would play with them, lick them, and then stick them in pants on the walls. But it was worth it if I had a a really serious business phone call or something.
00:16:53 Jacqueline
Discussing possibilities of a new book, right.
00:16:56 Jacqueline
That was my.
00:16:57 Jacqueline
Dreadful way of keeping her quiet and she's still got all her teeth too. And they're.
00:16:58 Alison
She has so funny.
00:17:00 Jacqueline
Very nice white ones.
00:17:04 Alison
That's brilliant. Now your books are often about kids who are the odd one out. Did you feel like that much growing up as a child?
00:17:13 Jacqueline
I think I always did feel a bit of an odd one out. I did have friends, but it circumstances as such we moved from Lewisham in London.
00:17:24 Jacqueline
To Kingston, where we were given a Council flat. And so I was a year and a half in for to schooling so that when I arrived at 6 1/2 or whatever, everybody had sort of got their little clumps of friends. So I do remember.
00:17:43 Jacqueline
Sort of wandering around the playground by myself for a little while, and then I'd never stayed to school dinners before and I my mum was not a great cook. I mean, she worshipped at the feet of Captain Birdseye and so he.
00:18:02 Jacqueline
Frozen pies and stuff, and so encountering stews and mints and and strange things like that, I just sort of found it very difficult to swallow it down and.
00:18:15 Jacqueline
Enjoy it. And so my first, you know, few years at school weren't that great, but then I settled down, got got some good friends, but I always, I always felt a little bit different, probably because I was and at secondary school.
00:18:36 Jacqueline
I had good friends. In fact, I'm still friends with a couple of of people that were at my school then, but.
00:18:46 Jacqueline
Sometimes I felt I was kind of pretending. I mean, as as we went further up the the years in secondary school, it became imperative for status to have a boyfriend. I didn't really want a boyfriend, but you know, I was desperate to have somebody so I could join in the chat and.
00:19:07 Jacqueline
You had to in those days. There were those hideous Buffon helmet things and and I didn't like that style. But again, I thought, yeah, this this is the way that you get accepted by other people. And then when I went up to Scotland at 17.
00:19:27 Jacqueline
I was so different from everybody else. Lived in a girls hostel to start with and then I shared a couple of rooms with another girl. But I was so different from these girls because to start with you had you had to try extra hard to get people to like you because.
00:19:47 Jacqueline
You were English.
00:19:50 Jacqueline
You were different. You were a S Mac.
00:19:53 Jacqueline
So in in my head.
00:19:56 Jacqueline
It I I I never quite relaxed and sort of chatted about the things that I cared about reading and writing and and all the rest of it. Because I mean, I once remember I went to my first pop concert with and it was a group called Jerry and The Pacemakers and.
00:20:17 Jacqueline
Long, long ago, who were probably as big as The Beatles then, and I went with some other girls from the hostel to this.
00:20:26 Jacqueline
And everybody started screaming as soon as they came on stage and I thought, oh, I see you meant to scream. And I didn't want to look stand offish, but I couldn't quite let go. So I sort of, well, they were all yelling their heads off and weeping and going cherry. I was going.
00:20:47 Jacqueline
A bit pathetic.
00:20:48 Jacqueline
But it was a total joy for me to kind of discover myself. I've when, you know, I started to.
00:20:59 Jacqueline
Books published and could feel that. I mean, the writers are very strange bunch, but at least I felt ohh. I understand what you're going through or why you're agonising about this, or why why you're feeling so desperately needy for praise.
00:21:15 Jacqueline
Because I am.
00:21:16 Jacqueline
Too, and it was like, you know.
00:21:18 Jacqueline
Finding my tribe and.
00:21:22 Jacqueline
And there was a freedom in that to to be myself. I I think particularly when you're a young man at home, it's hard to know sometimes who you are because you're fitting in. If you have a partner fitting in with them, you're fitting in with all your children's needs. And I always remember I went to some book group.
00:21:44 Jacqueline
And this woman was saying she'd been to some very interesting therapy session with lots of people. And they all had to write down their, their favourite this and their favourite that and she said she actually started weeping because she said, I don't know what my favourite is. She said, I know what my husband.
00:22:04 Jacqueline
Like I know what my children like, but I can't remember what I like. I I think. I think women now have got more sense and life has changed.
00:22:16 Jacqueline
So that you know they can, you know, remember that they're a person too, and that their needs also have to be met. But in in my day, in this so-called swinging 60s and the and the sort of psychedelic 70s, you know, if you were suburban you you LED pretty, you know.
00:22:36 Jacqueline
Dropped to the launderette. Drop back again. Dropped the supermarket. Dropped back again. You were the one.
00:22:42 Jacqueline
And reading the bedtime stories it it was very different.
00:22:47 Alison
Yeah, very different. Now you live with your partner, Trish, in Sussex. How important is it to you that you write about LGBTQ characters and issues in your?
00:22:57 Jacqueline
Books I wrote ages ago. I wrote a book called Kiss where there was a boy in it who was discovering when he was about 13.
00:23:07 Jacqueline
That he was gay.
00:23:10 Jacqueline
And but it's written from the point of view of his best friend next door, a girl who everybody always thought you know, there's loves young dream and would always be together. So I vote about getting this then. But it wasn't until I wrote love Frankie for.
00:23:29 Jacqueline
It's it's. It's a sort of young adult book. Yeah, for I don't know, 13 to 15 year olds, something like that. And and.
00:23:39 Jacqueline
I think my publishers thought, well, people are going to ask you, is this your own experience? And I've been living very happily with Trish for a good 20 years, and it wasn't a secret. You know, everybody that knew me knew us, but I thought, OK, so I did an interview with a journalist and.
00:23:59 Jacqueline
Luckily, it was no big deal.
00:24:03 Jacqueline
I don't think it ever would have done because I'm not a a desperately strident person, quite sort of reticent as such. But it's it's nice to feel that as far as I'm aware, there's been no sort of fuss about.
00:24:23 Jacqueline
Two women living together. Perhaps it helps when you're older and you've got grey hair.
00:24:27 Wendy
But it gives.
00:24:29 Jacqueline
A damn what? What you do or whatever. But if if it's important to a a book that a character would be gay.
00:24:41 Jacqueline
Yes, I would write about it, but I don't really feel.
00:24:47 Jacqueline
Impelled to have well, I think all my books are go friendly and and in the best sleepover in the world and the children's uncle Gary, who's one of my favourite character.
00:25:02 Jacqueline
Earns a living as a drag artist and actually comes to lilies. That's that's the daisies nonverbal sister comes to her sleepover party and is wonderful and teaches them how to dance. And also.
00:25:21 Jacqueline
Gives them a fantastic makeover because I think drag Queens are so wonderful with their makeup and I'm I'm also he calls himself a transvestite Potter. I'm. I'm actually friends with Grayson Perry, the Potter and.
00:25:38 Jacqueline
We've been at one or two duos together, and Grayson always puts everybody in the shame and his makeup now is quite incredible. He's taken to sort of glittery bits all over his cheek. His lipstick is never smudged. I mean, he he always looks spot on and he's he's tall man.
00:25:50 Alison
Ohh wow.
00:25:58 Jacqueline
And you know, he's the first person you see in a in a crowded room. And then he always has the most incredible.
00:26:05 Jacqueline
Rocks and extraordinary heels and his feet never seemed to hurt either. So. So I I know, I know. And so Uncle Gary isn't based on Grayson, but I I think I think children will enjoy Uncle Gary and he's not.
00:26:12 Alison
Not fair.
00:26:26 Jacqueline
Is not ever, ever a sort of.
00:26:31 Jacqueline
Ultra Camp making a sort of slight innuendo type, remarks. He's he's very respectful and very sweet.
00:26:42 Wendy
So you say that Uncle Gary is not based on Grayson. Have you ever had?
00:26:47 Wendy
Someone you know or a family member or a friend or something, say.
00:26:51 Wendy
That's me in that book, isn't it? And you're like, no.
00:26:56
Definitely not.
00:26:57 Jacqueline
That does happen sometimes, and it always astonishes me because I don't put real people in my books. I might put some tiny little aspect of them, but never ever a whole person.
00:27:12 Jacqueline
And it's bizarre sometimes how mistaken people can be.
00:27:16 Jacqueline
And I have to say quite firmly, no, that's not you and never was anything like you, and sometimes it's a book that I wrote long before it even got to know whichever person it is. But I don't know if it keeps people happy. Fine.
00:27:37 Wendy
Just it's not you just just definitely not you.
00:27:40 Alison
You you mentioned that in your new book that the character Lily is non viable. His representation of children with different needs and ability is important to you when you're writing.
00:27:53 Jacqueline
I think it is and in the first sleepovers book we have Lilly being an important character, but she can't express herself.
00:28:04 Jacqueline
And then when I was reading through it, I thought my delight that there I had written, that they'd moved so that Lily could go to a special school and and that's why my main character, Daisy, is trying to make friends with all the the girls at this new school.
00:28:24 Jacqueline
And so I thought this time round, if I'm revisiting sleepovers, we're going to see.
00:28:30 Jacqueline
What Lily has been learning at the new school and as well as having special therapy for her, her arms and her fingers to try and help her be able to use them more easily, they have taught her to use makaton, which is a a signing language for nonverbal people.
00:28:50 Jacqueline
And you can use it for.
00:28:53 Jacqueline
Baby, it's not very little babies, but there's a woman I knew that that used to go to book shops and and give readings to very little people and and she would also sign too. So I thought this is brilliant. And then I found on the Internet.
00:29:13 Jacqueline
That's wonderful.
00:29:14 Jacqueline
For little girl called Lucinda, who's got a fantastic mum. I think she's called Nikki and they.
00:29:20 Jacqueline
Do the act.
00:29:21 Jacqueline
Out the different makaton signs and I am trying now to learn a few so that when I'm I go out and talk to people about sleepovers. I I can do it.
00:29:35 Jacqueline
I mean, I'm.
00:29:36 Jacqueline
Quite slow at learning and I've I've gone through the whole text of the best sleeper over in the world and sorted out all the different signing that Lilly does so that hopefully when I first go out to talk to people about it I can do a little bit of signing.
00:29:55 Jacqueline
And maybe the people in the audience would like to try and do some back. I mean, it's it's to my shame, I I you see Lucinda and her.
00:30:00 Alison
That's lovely.
00:30:07 Jacqueline
Mother. But of course there are.
00:30:09 Jacqueline
A mirror image to.
00:30:10 Jacqueline
Me. So I don't know what it says about my intellect, but I can't quite work out which hand.
00:30:16 Jacqueline
It is.
00:30:19 Jacqueline
So it takes me a little while, you know, a a, a, a child of of 1 probably can pass trip quicker than I do, but I am determined.
00:30:29 Wendy
Well, the TV character, Mr Tumble does smack Eaton as.
00:30:33 Jacqueline
Well, I should look for Mr Tumble. I have heard of Mr Tumble at the moment I'm besotted with Lucinda, but I'm sure Mr Tumble will be very useful too.
00:30:43 Wendy
But those characters in your books are so important. Jacqueline. Like, for example, for my 7 year old, my brother, her uncle has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair.
00:30:55 Wendy
So to see characters in your books who are in wheelchairs and who have got learning disabilities makes it so much easier for her to understand the real life scenario that's going on for her.
00:31:07 Jacqueline
Yes, I I think it's wonderful if you can find somebody in a book that does reflect your own experience. And I have tried very hard to.
00:31:21 Jacqueline
Not just to make things up, but to check facts and check what sort of things would happen at the school and I have been to not because this book, but simply in the past there's a very big special school called trillos that I have been to quite a lot of times.
00:31:42 Jacqueline
In the past because.
00:31:43 Jacqueline
They did the reading challenge, and so I came and chatted a bit and then it became a tradition for a while that I would go back every year. But it was a.
00:31:55 Jacqueline
Lovely, lovely school, fantastic kids and so I'm very glad I did that and I appreciate that.
00:32:04 Jacqueline
Many people aren't lucky enough to be able to get to a school like that. I think it's all depends on your local council and whether you can pay for it and.
00:32:14 Jacqueline
It's really, really expensive. It seems a very important thing, because if you if.
00:32:21 Jacqueline
Have a disability, surely to goodness you're the very people that need as much education and development as you possibly can have so that you can lead as much of A life afterwards when you're grown up as you, as you possibly can at this school they have special.
00:32:42 Jacqueline
Sort of like a a shop and and things where you have to go and communicate what you.
00:32:48 Jacqueline
Want and they have a band that even if the use of your arms isn't possible, there was one wicked boy who was absolutely brilliant just being able to use his his one foot that was workable on a drum, but he also used it fantastically to communicate with his own.
00:33:11 Jacqueline
Way of signing and and his music teacher had formed a brilliant, brilliant relationship with him.
00:33:20 Jacqueline
With teasing him in a sweet way and and telling him ohh yes. So and so is doing this and doing that aren't you so and so this boy just did 2 short sharp beats which were quite clearly a rude way of telling him.
00:33:37
To get lost.
00:33:39 Jacqueline
On his scrum.
00:33:40 Jacqueline
And I thought, yeah.
00:33:42 Jacqueline
This, this, this is what you need and an ability to express yourself in whichever way you.
00:33:48 Wendy
So I think it's what I really love is that your initial audience are now growing up and introducing their children to your books. Do you hear from readers now who are introducing Tracy or Petty to their children?
00:34:04 Jacqueline
I I not only hear from them, I meet them.
00:34:07 Jacqueline
And sometimes it's signing sessions. They bring out a rather rumpled book.
00:34:13 Jacqueline
And it's actually got to so and so love from Jacqueline Wilson in it. And that was the mum's book when she was a little girl. She's kind of initiating her own child into reading my books, which is fantastic. The only thing is that these these books were made quite well.
00:34:33 Jacqueline
And still last so that my sales are nowhere near.
00:34:38 Jacqueline
As big as.
00:34:38 Jacqueline
They used to be.
00:34:40 Jacqueline
And it does.
00:34:43 Wendy
You've shot yourself in the.
00:34:44 Wendy
Foot there, Jacqueline.
00:34:46 Alison
You need flimsy books are gonna fall apart.
00:34:48 Jacqueline
That's it. Every 10 years. Yes, explode.
00:34:52 Wendy
But then you'd get done for not saving the planet.
00:34:54 Wendy
So you can't.
00:34:55
Win. Yes. No.
00:34:56 Jacqueline
I'm not being serious. I mean, it's lovely to me.
00:34:58 Wendy
I know, I know.
00:34:59 Jacqueline
That people treasure the boats.
00:35:02 Alison
Finally, Jacqueline, is it true that Tracy Beaker was named after a Snoopy Cup?
00:35:07 Jacqueline
It was indeed. I I remember thinking.
00:35:12 Jacqueline
I want to write about what it's like to be in a children's home. I I wrote it more than 30 years ago when more children were in really big residential children's homes. That doesn't happen so much now, thank goodness, because there's far more effort made into trying. Even if children can't be fostered in a family.
00:35:32 Jacqueline
To be in a small environment.
00:35:34 Jacqueline
Went but then there were big children's homes, and I'd seen an advert for children photographs, real children, where they were trying to find foster homes for them. And I didn't think ohh. I must foster one too, because I know what hard work it is. I I wish I could.
00:35:54 Jacqueline
Either person I've met many foster parents who I just so admire, but I thought I could write about what it's like to be one of these children, and then I was thinking about it and I don't start to write straight away. I was probably writing something else, so it was on my mind all the time. And.
00:36:14 Jacqueline
In the morning one morning, I like. I like to have a leisurely bath and it's a good daydreaming time. And I was lying back in the bath, just idly looking round the room. I have a little routine. When I tell children this and cause, hopefully it breaks the ice and makes them laugh and say.
00:36:33 Jacqueline
Well, I knew I was gonna call my girl Tracy, cause it's a funny, bouncy sort of name, but I go through this, shall I call her Tracy flannel, Tracy soap, Tracy tap.
00:36:45 Jacqueline
Tracy toilet and that always makes them laugh and relax. And if it's a school, they look nervously at the teacher, but they realise it's OK. You can just sit back and enjoy yourself and but the the truthful bit of the story is that I was thinking that I cannot find the right sort of name that will sound a realistic.
00:37:06 Jacqueline
Name, but stick in people's mind and in those days very little money, no shower attachment or anything. After I I'd had my bath, I would wash, put shampoo in my hair and then keep an old snoopy beaker on the end of the bath, put it under the taps, and slice my hair. And there I was with this speaker.
00:37:25 Jacqueline
And I suddenly thought Tracy Beaker and it was just that moment I thought. Yeah, that's it. I had no idea that many years later. You know, if somebody saw me in the street, if it was a child. Ohh, Tracy beaker there.
00:37:40 Jacqueline
I mean, goodness knows what the valiant Danny Harmer feels.
00:37:44 Alison
Because she's been.
00:37:46 Jacqueline
Playing Tracy right throughout her life, even you know, as as a mum herself, she's got two lovely children now herself. But there she's back on the television, being Tracy as a mum and.
00:38:00 Jacqueline
But I think being a good mum.
00:38:01 Jacqueline
Too, which which is.
00:38:03 Jacqueline
Is nice. I mean, obviously Denny's a a good mum, but I wasn't sure what sort of mum Tracy would be, but I wanted to prove that you don't need to have had a a a good upbringing. Well, an an easy upbringing with a loving parent who's always there. What what can happen?
00:38:20 Jacqueline
Is it if you haven't had that, you're so determined to give that to your child. And so I that that was my my sort of one thing that I wanted to make certain could happen for her.
00:38:34 Alison
Yeah, that's fantastic.
00:38:35 Wendy
Thank you, Jacqueline. What a lovely way to spend a morning having a chat with you. Thank you so much for joining.
00:38:40 Alison
Just wonderful.
00:38:42 Jacqueline
Us ohh, it's been great. It's like we're all in the living room together having a
00:38:46 Jacqueline
Cup of.
00:38:46 Jacqueline
Coffee, do you?
00:38:47 Wendy
Get to go and have another Raisin bun now.
00:38:50 Wendy
I hope so.
00:38:53 Wendy
Thank you.