Former Ant and Dec scriptwriter Dean Wilkinson talks to Ruth Addicott about his new series of comedy books which are set in local schools

North-East scriptwriter Dean Wilkinson has worked with some of the biggest names in comedy during his 30 year career, including Ant and Dec, Stephen Fry and Harry Hill. But when it came to inspiration for one of his latest books, he turned straight to his old junior school in Thornaby.

Dean created the spooky children’s comedy books Muriel’s Murals alongside artist Rebecca Morton, who came up with the idea while she was painting murals in schools. The story features a ‘Kitsch-Witch’ called Muriel, who paints magic murals that come to life and the second book in the series is based at Bader Primary in Thornaby.

“I really wanted to get the Bader in there because it’s my old school,” says Dean, who lives in Eaglescliffe. “I left in 1979 but it feels as though it shaped me. We had Miss Dann as headmistress, who was quite strict but lovely. The teachers were really keen to push your imagination and encouraged me so much I wanted to set a book there and let the world know there is this brilliant school called the Bader.”

Dean recalls playing cricket, swapping Star Wars cards and performing Monty Python sketches in the playground. “If you behaved yourself it was great because there were so many teachers and great characters and they really wanted you to do well,” he says.

A father of three, Dean went back to Bader to do a book signing and is hoping to encourage the ‘reluctant reader’. He has had around 10 children’s books published previously, the first of which, The Legend of Arthur King, was also set in Thornaby. The difference with Muriel’s Murals is they are written in a font which makes it easier for dyslexic children to read.

Dean fell into scriptwriting by chance. A huge fan of the legendary punk group The Damned, he started out wanting to be a singer/songwriter back in the Eighties.

“It was going nowhere so I turned to script-writing, sending scripts off to anyone I could think of,” he says. “I got stuff on the Brian Conley Show and Smith and Jones. I sent some stuff to the BBC and they liked my style and said, ‘Can you come down, we’d like you to meet PJ and Duncan’. I said, ‘I have no idea who they are’.”

The duo, now better known as Ant and Dec, worked with Dean for seven years, during which he wrote the multi-award winning SMTV Live and Chums and won a string of awards from BAFTA and Royal Television Society. “It was great,” he says. “They were absolutely brilliant. They can make a writer lazy because they’ve got such natural comic talent and timing. Usually you have to put that in a script, but they would just wing it and get it right first time, so it was a real pleasure.”

He has also written scripts for Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Rik Mayall, John Cleese and Harry Hill. “When you get somebody like Stephen Fry or Harry Hill, it makes you up your game,” he says. It is testament to his talent that he can turn his hand to everything from games consoles, ghost-writing and kids TV to providing topical material for Andrew Neil’s BBC2 news and politics show featuring Timmy Mallett.

In between jobs, Dean works as a teaching assistant at Westlands Academy, in Thornaby, which has also provided inspiration for his next book. “I’ve seen how hard teachers work. That’s why in the Bader book, especially, I wanted to make the teacher a hero - just sort of tipping a hat to them,” he says.

Dean already has three more Muriel books in the pipeline, another of which is based at The Oaks, in Spennymoor. On top of that, he is writing an app and a game and looking at doing a stage version and an animated series or film. He says he never gets writers block. “I miss it if I’m away from the computer too long, even when I’m absolutely shattered, I’ll wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and make some notes,” he says. “It’s just something I love to do.”

So how has comedy writing changed?

“I think there are fewer opportunities these days because of the rise of reality TV, which in my view is just lazy,” he says. “Nowadays it’s about people watching TV, dancing or baking cakes. Britain used to lead the world with our programming. There were so many brilliant TV shows, fantastic ideas were ten a penny, but now we rarely put out anything truly original. What I think we need to do - and it’s a pretty cynical view – is stop making idiots famous. I think you need to have a talent to be on TV, not just be able to shout and argue like reality TV stars. It’s awful. We need to get rid of it and I’m very passionate about that.”

It’s writing comedy for kids that Dean enjoys most, mainly because of the challenge. “If you write a kid’s show or kid’s book, you know instantly if it’s crap because kids are so savvy,” he says.

Muriel’s Murals may be about a primary school, but he has still managed to shoehorn in a reference to The Damned. The world ‘Bazzazz’ in which the story is set came from a mis-heard lyric from one of their songs and Dean even credits the band for getting him back on track.

“It was curious because the Christmas before I was having a really bad time and suffering from depression,” he says. “A friend of a friend was a roadie for The Damned and he got Captain Sensible to record a little message saying, ‘Come on, snap out of it’. It was lovely that he went to the trouble to do that for a fan he didn’t know and it really lifted me up. So in the book, I said a big thank you to The Damned and put the little story about the mis-heard lyric. It got me back into the flow of things and when Rebecca contacted me about doing a book, I was feeling creative and happy. It was a real pick-me-up from The Damned.”

Muriel’s Murals The Adventure of Bader Primary, by Dean Wilkinson and Rebecca Morton is published by Lexie Mouse Design (£9.99) and available from Amazon.