Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole - Diary of a Provincial Man

This TV Mole has a mother called Pauline and a father called George. This cannot be mere coincidence — somebody has published my life and is exploiting it for commercial reasons. I immediately rang my agent's solicitor, Peter Elf, and left a message. The BBC must be prevented from broadcasting this series. Surely I have intellectual copyright on my own life?

I was unable to concentrate on The Archers , and thus missed a strand of an important storyline: will Kate go back to South Africa with her black lover and take her first-born child?

Saturday, February 3

Several people, including Pandora, have rung up to enquire about the Mole TV series. Pandora was outraged, though I could tell that she is rather flattered that she is being played by Helen Baxendale.

Monday, February 5

I rang Greg Dyke's office at 7am this morning, but the slug-a-bed was not at his bed. Do we licence-payers award a full-time salary to a man who apparently works part-time? It would appear so.

Mr Elf warned me against taking out an injunction against the BBC. He said, "It would be a David and Goliath situation." I pointed out to him that little David was in fact the victor against the giant Goliath. Elf replied, "In my opinion, David struck lucky with that stone. Goliath obviously had a very thin skull."

Tania Braithwaite brought last week's Radio Times around this morning. Inside, was a "film-set diary" purported to have been written by a bloke calling himself Adrian Mole. This Mole bloke was also upset that his life was being exploited.

A friend of Tania's in publishing had told her that an old hack called Sue Townsend had been trying for years to publish the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole , claiming that they were fiction. She showed me a piece of the manuscript. I read in increasing astonishment as details of my private life were revealed. How does this woman know so much about me? Is she tapping my phone? Has she bugged my house? Tania said that Townsend grew bitter after going on an Arvon poetry course led by Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, where Henri told her that she was not a poet and never would be after she handed in a poem called A Contemplation Regarding Earwig Defecation:

How to measure earwig poo?

How to know how much they do?

Are there scales to measure it

Those tiny piles of earwig shit?

Townsend then made a hysterical denunciation of modern poetry and ran out of the class and down to the river. She threatened to throw herself in unless Adrian Henri sent her earwig poem to Bloodaxe with a recommendation that they commission a thick volume of her verse. Adrian Henri came to the opposite bank and shouted across the river, "Throw yourself in and give us all a break."

Townsend has hated all men called Adrian since that day. AA Gill is another of her obsessions. Is she the reason my own literary endeavours have come to nought?

Tuesday, February 6

Leicester-born painter Adrian Hemming has fled the country after hearing that Townsend is an admirer of his work. "I heard that she was planning to buy one of my 'wave' pictures and hang it in her bathroom," he said from his hiding place. "I must protect my name."

Sunday, February 11, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

Does the psychological medical establishment formally recognise Ikea rage? I think I suffered three separate episodes of it today. The first came in the car park, when a small child, who appeared to be in charge of parking, turned me away from a disabled space. I showed him a photocopy of a letter from my doctor, which clearly stated that I was suffering from a medical condition, but he indicated that I must back out of the space and allow an invalid carriage driven by an old git in a neck brace to drive in. Dr Ng's letter:

Dear Mr Mole

Further to your many visits to the surgery this week. Your blood test results have returned from the lab and show beyond doubt that you are not suffering from HIV, BSG or MRSC. Your heart, kidney, liver, lungs and brain are functioning normally for a man of your age. You are, however, suffering from severe hypochondria. I have discussed your case with my colleagues, Drs Singh and O'Neil, and they are satisfied that my diagnosis is correct. May I suggest that you examine other areas of your life for the cause of your unhappiness.

Dr Ng

PS: In future, please do not visit the surgery or request a home visit unless you are certain that you are suffering from a life-threatening illness.

The second Ikea rage attack occurred in the Storage System section, when Glenn disputed my measurements for the run of Billy bookcases I'd planned to install in the living room. "I'm tellin' yer, Dad, you ain't gonna get three of 'em against that back wall," he said. We faced up to each other as weary shoppers tramped by. I was aware of Glenn's testosterone pumping through his teenage body. "I will not have you questioning my calculations," I roared, and Glenn stormed off with his tail between his legs. I eventually caught up with him in Bathrooms, where he was standing in a shower stall, sullenly examining the fixtures. In the warehouse, he silently helped me to lug three flatpack Billy bookcases on to a trolley. If he'd been in the army, I could have charged him with dumb insolence.

My third attack came in the 10-deep queue, when the woman customer at the till insisted on opening the five boxes containing a fitted wardrobe and proceeded to count the screws. My temples pulsed with irritation so much that I feared that I would suffer an aneurysm and be carried out in a flatpack coffin.

Monday, February 12

I rang Pandora at the Commons and asked her to translate the Swedish instructions for assembling the Billy bookcases. As I waited for her to fax them to me, I marvelled at her courteous and helpful tone. Then I remembered: she will be fighting a marginal seat in May, and every vote will count, including mine.

Tuesday, February 13

I have tried and failed to assemble the Billy bookcases. There is obviously something in my genetic make-up that prevents me from holding a screwdriver in one hand while sinking screws into a hole in a plank of wood with the other. I now divide the world into those who can and those who can't assemble Ikea furniture. Can list: Paul Daniels, Frank Bruno, William Hague, Madonna, Princess Anne, Glenn Bott. Can't list: Peter Mandelson, Caroline Aherne, Prince Charles, Sir Edward Heath.

Wednesday, February 14, Valentine's Day

Not a single card. Not one. Nothing. Glenn received 11. They are standing proudly on top of the two Billy bookcases he assembled last night. The third didn't fit.

Thursday, February 15

A Valentine's card arrived this morning from Pamela Pigg. The cheapskate had affixed a second-class stamp. Inside, she had written, "Let's try again."

Sunday, February 18, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

I organised my library tonight using my own idiosyncratic alphabetical system. So, the first book on my Billy bookcases was AA Gill's Collected Works . The last was zzz's, The Insomniac's Handbook .

In between, of course, were the tomes penned by the masters and mistresses of literature. How I longed to join them!

I went to bed after loading the washing machine with a pile of mixed coloureds but woke only an hour later worrying about the escalating tension in Iraq. Glenn keeps asking me awkward questions about Britain's role in the protection of the no-fly zone. Such as: "'Ow can it be cold protection, Dad, when old people an' little 'uns got killed?" He is an unsophisticated boy and can't quite grasp the subtleties of the situation. I tossed on my pillow, haunted by past humiliations: the time my mother came to a parents' evening at Neil Armstrong comprehensive wearing yellow tights; the day my father and I sat on a bus together and he began to sing “If I Ruled The World”; my wedding night, when I couldn't unfasten the cord of my pyjama trousers and my bride, Jo Jo, was forced to cut it with the scissors on her Swiss army knife, my screams brought the night porter to our room having been summoned by an irritable executive next door.