So the news has finally emerged that Enid Blyton’s works, and in fact the author herself, were banned from the BBC for 30 years. Firstly, it’s probably important to clarify why this ban was put in place. Ms Blyton once made a horrendously misjudged prank call to Andrew Sachs and – no. Ok, you caught me in a lie there. The reality of the situation is a little more bland. People simply didn’t think her books were good enough.
Now, at first I reacted like I’m sure a lot of us did, by feeling that this had been an act of heresy against a legend of children’s fiction writing. Then I started remembering a bit more about the Enid Blyton books I read as a child. The Famous Five were of course five…mammals. I nearly said "people", then remembered that the fifth member was Timmy the dog.
I can’t think what Timmy actually did to be worthy of being counted. It’s not as if he ever came out with anything memorable. I mean Brian from Family Guy steals the show - there was no excuse for Enid Blyton to be so lazy about writing good one-liners for the dog. In the end, we can only assume that Timmy was counted so that Enid could cynically cash in on Hibs fans expecting to read about Smith, Johnstone, Reilly, Turnbull, and Ormond. OK, perhaps I’m getting the order of which Famous Five came first slightly mixed up there. (I’m not a Hibbee by the way, just have an appreciation of footballing history.)
At this point many of you are spluttering with indignation at me being facetious about the writing abilities of Miss Blyton. You’re right, of course. She wasn’t just responsible for giving us The Famous Five. She also brought us…The Secret Seven. Well, why not? If one set of books about some alliterative crime-fighting kids had worked, why shouldn’t another? Secret Six? No…that would be a little bit too close. People might detect the formula. Safer to throw another one into the mix. - Secret Seven. Nobody will suspect the well of inspiration is drying up.
No, you’re right, the Secret Seven didn’t just re-use the formula of the Famous Five. If it had, then one of the Secret Seven would have been a dog. Oh…hang on. Sorry for forgetting about you, Scamper.
Anyway, I really need to stop insulting the skills of a writer estimated to have sold around 600million books worldwide. That means she was probably a more successful writer than I’ll ever be. (I can only think that I added the “probably’” because I’ve been exposed to too many Americans on TV babbling about “positive thinking”) There was definitely more to her writing than generic book titles - there were also interesting characters. I mean, what about the Noddy books? You had Big Ears – he had big ears, there was his brother Little Ears – he had littler ears than Big Ears, and there was also a tramp called…Stinkly. I didn’t remember Stinkly either, but look him up, he’s there.
What I’m saying is, maybe that ban wasn’t entirely without good reason. Of course the obvious response is “so you think you could do better?” Well, now that you come to mention it, does anybody fancy commissioning me to write the adventures of the Super Six…as they encounter Big Nose, Little Nose, …and Junkly?
Teddy Craig is a finalist in stv.tv's The Write Factor competition. The views expressed are not necessarily those of STV plc. If you would like to read more from this writer, use our comment system below.
