Jo Case interviews Andy Griffiths on the Readings bookshop weblog. Griffiths is the author of those modern classics, The Day My Bum Went Psycho, and The Big Fat Cow That Went Kapow!.
My son pointed that out to me recently, that in your books, bad behaviour never turns out well. I wonder if the kids get the morality of the tale more than the grown-ups.He must be very perceptive. Because most radio hosts, I've been doing interviews with over the past few weeks start with "there's no educational value and no morality in these books, they're just wild".
Very early on I realised that if Andy's playing all these pranks on people and succeeding, he'd actually be a very unlikable character. So, I've said he can play any joke no matter how horrible, as long he's the one who ultimately suffers. And I think we know, on a subconscious level, that that's fair game, that we can enjoy that. Because nobody's getting hurt, except the person who deserves it. Whereas if you push a little old lady over and make her slip on a banana skin, it's funny to a degree, but it's Funniest Home Videos. It's funny until the bit where you cut the tape and show them in pain. I wrote a story about that actually. "Unfunniest Home Videos" [in the latest Just Shocking]. I thought Andy would be the kind of kid who would film his friend Danny having an accident to win the money. And then the formula is, how is this going to backfire so he's the one who ends up getting hurt?
