Yet Another Celebrity, Yet Another Children’s Book

I want to preface by saying that I am actually a huge fan of Mr and Mrs Chris and Rosie Ramsey. I love Chris’ comedy, I ADORE their podcast and credit my survival of the 2020 / 2021 lockdowns and home working in part to said podcast. We’ve seen them on tour, I watched every episode of Chris’s run on Taskmaster in 2022.

I love them.

BUT.

Last week they announced that they have signed with Simon & Schuster for two – yes, TWO – children’s books, the first of which is due out in September and called There’s A Poonami in My House.

First of all, I’d absolutely love to know when the great shift occurred from the children’s books I used to enjoy coughs… twenty-to-thirty years ago of pastel-illustrated animals and treehouses and ballerinas to this onslaught of toilet humour and non-stop poo jokes. I don’t love it, personally, and maybe that’s a snobbery thing or a not-having-a-four-year-old boy thing. @ me about it, by all means.

But what is starting to frustrate me enormously is the same thing I complained about in the three years it took from me completing my novel manuscript to that novel appearing on the shelves – good writer or not, it would be a thousand times easier to publish a novel about anything, if only I was famous for something else. If I was a musician or a podcaster or a TV presenter or was on Bake Off a few years ago or Love Island, my name would be enough. But it wasn’t. It isn’t.

There are so, so many aspiring children’s authors out there who are experts in the field, work in books or publishing perhaps, have an MA in Children’s Literature from a fine university, their little notepads absolutely full to brim of beautiful, inspirational stories that could well become the The Tiger Who Came To Tea of this generation. But they’ll never see the light of day because any and all publishing budget – which, I happen to know, is next to nowt across the board – is being poured into names people already know because it’s a safe bet that a market already exists. Good business? Maybe. But a tragedy for a whole host of talented writers who aren’t going to get anywhere through no fault of their own.

I’m not saying celebrity books aren’t good. Most TV presenters and people who appeared on Mock The Week once or twice seem to have all gone to Cambridge together in the 90s. I’m so excited by the idea of people reading that I suppose it doesn’t really matter what they read, I’m just thrilled that people – children especially – are reading at all.

But now that I am on the other side of the manuscript, as it were, what I think has annoyed me the most about this new announcement from – again, love the Geordies – The Ramseys, is that they happily admitted that they were approached by S&S for it, and the book isn’t even written yet. This is not a passion project or something they came up with because they are parents and have children (they do, two poo-obsessed little boys) – the publisher sought them out especially because they are well-known people with two poo-obsessed little boys. The announcement had all the hallmarks of a beauty-mum vlogger on YouTube trying to justify an absurd sponsorship deal with a tyre company because, y’know, she has a car, so. It makes perfect sense.

After spending eight months planning my book, ten months writing the book, and two years querying the book, the thought that a two-book deal has been issued for something that doesn’t even exist yet when there are probably thousands of already-written, polished, beautiful books just sitting there makes me…well. Frustrated, to say the least.

I am celebrity-fatigued. I am ‘a new Star Wars story’-fatigued. I am definitely ‘a stunning remake of the classic’ / ‘modern re-boot’-fatigued. The fact is, it’s unlikely to change either, because celebrity culture is self-perpetuating, a vicious circle that excludes 99.998% of a qualified and gifted population at the expense of a sort-of well-known person famous for being camp and spiteful or playing the tuba on

TikTok.

‘Chico Time’ indeed.