Ok, I hold up my hand – I’m guilty. Guilty of not writing my Diary until now. I wanted to write my Diary in July … and August and last week. But something always happened to stop me. What something? Ah – that would be telling …… and who are these cheeky-chappies?





OK – seeing as you asked …

The cheeky chappies are two writer pals of mine – the two Steves – Skidmore and Barlow (he’s the one with the beard) – are the authors of Mad Myths and many other brilliant books. They came to stay in May and I’m just recovering.

I had to finish Beastly Body Experiments and then write a beastly new book called the Angry Animals Shuffle Puzzle Book and you can guess what’s that’s about. But they’re finished now. Beastly Body Experiments is even more horrible than I expected. My favourite experiment is the one where you can make your own shrunken head – GRUESOME isn’t the word for it but if it proves popular I’ll soon know about it because their will be lots of little brothers and sisters walking about with unusually small heads.

And then there’s the Horrible Science Shows. “Hi!” to all of you who came to see me at Dorchester-on-Thames in June and all 850 of you who packed into the Theatre Royal, York on 9 September.

Yes, I thought York was a great show too (pause for Nick’s head to shrink back to its normal size with the aid of the head-shrinking experiment. And thanks to all of you who e-mailed to say how much you enjoyed the Horrible Science CD’s given away free with the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers!

Oh yes, and I nearly forgot to mention the Appledore Book Festival – of which I’m the Director (posh job title, eh?) It starts on 29 September and features a host of famous authors talking about their books – including Michael Rosen, Vivian French, and not to mention Martin Brown – illustrator of the Horrible Histories and our very own Tony De Saulles, the Horrible Science cartoonist.

So if you live in the south-west of England, why not drag your family to Appledore? You might even see me rushing around and looking harassed!

Now that would be enough for most normal people – but I’m not – as my family keep telling me – so I’ve been up to my neck in relaunching Horrible Science books for next February. That means giving them new covers and updating all the horrible facts and checking them for accuracy. We’re kicking off with six titles including Blood, Bones and Body Bits – is that gory or what?

Wow – that’s almost as grisly as Beastly Body Experiments!