Did you see the story a few weeks ago about the little girl who told the artist LS Lowry that he couldn’t be famous because ‘No one at my school has ever heard of you.’ Brilliant! Young Miss Ethelwyn Warburton (whose name sounds like a Roald Dahl character if I ever heard one) was 9 or 10 when she told him this in 1952. Isn’t it reassuring that they had rude kids in those days, too? See, we can’t blame everything on Matt Groening or Facebook.
In response to her jibe, Lowry borrowed Ethelwyn’s paint tin and dashed off a watercolour for her. It took him about five minutes tops and recently fetched £62,000 at auction.
I’m surprised Lowry felt the need to prove himself to a ten- year old. ‘Well all the kids at your school must be thick,’ is what I would have told her. But then I’m not famous. In fact, I’m so used to nobody having heard of me that when they tell me they have I’m genuinely delighted. ‘Really? That’s amazing!’ I gush and ask for their autograph.
Sometimes librarians and teachers introduce me to a group of children along the lines of: ‘Today we’ve got a famous author visiting us.’ I look over my shoulder to see who is behind me. ‘But you are famous to them,’ one librarian explained when I questioned this blatant fib.
I suppose I should see it as a compliment that children associate writers with fame but it’s rather sad, too. It feels as if I have to justify my presence; that it makes the event more special to say ‘famous author’ rather than ‘author’. Surely being a published author is enough?
I reckon there is only one children’s writer in the whole of the UK who is so famous as to be instantly recognizable to the man in the street and that’s JK Rowling. Avid readers would recognize Jacqueline Wilson; maybe Philip Pullman and Anthony Horowitz at a push but most children’s writers – even the ones who have done so well they have fan clubs and a Blue Peter badge – don’t get mobbed in Blockbusters. Why, only the other month I managed to walk the whole length of the Old Brompton Road with Jeremy Strong and not one person put us on You Tube. Those passers-by must be kicking themselves.
Yet for me that’s what’s so great about being a writer instead of an actor or TV personality; we’re allowed to lead pretty ordinary lives. We don’t need Botox to appear before our fans. We get away with having cellulite in front of our computer screens. We eat in Pizza Express. We shop at Sainsbury’s. If we didn’t, we couldn’t write. There would be far too many distractions.
Me being not famous in Lanarkshire