I dug up this interview with Philip Pullman from the arcives of The Independent. Although it's an old interview I really love it because it's really openharted and humorous; "Jude used to be a teacher, too, and then a hypnotherapist. "Although," says Philip later, "not of the crazy sort. She helped people stop smoking."
The Harry Potter phenomenon has proved there is big money in modern children's fiction. But it took Philip Pullman (who's just won the Whitbread prize) to show us that it had intellectual credibility. So why is he watching Neighbours every lunchtime?
I am watching Neighbours with Philip Pullman, winner of this year's Whitbread prize for The Amber Spyglass, and total literary genius in most people's books, although not Peter Hitchens's, who, in The Mail on Sunday, accused him of "killing God" and then labelled him "the most dangerous author in Britain". ("Of course," says Pullman, "I sent him a warm card of appreciation and thanks.") I must say, I don't feel in any particular danger. I must say, I don't feel he's about to invoke dark forces and make off with a cup of my blood. He looks kindly, avuncular, like the schoolteacher he once was: 56, grey-haired and not bespectacled, although you kind of feel he ought to be. He is wearing a comfy checked shirt and chinos. He does not say things like: "OK, who's ready for black mass?" Instead, he says things like: "Now, that's Lou and the question is, will he get custody of Lolly?" And: "That's the nice blonde nurse who was made pregnant by the doctor's nasty sidekick."
He watches Neighbours every day, at 1.45pm. Never misses it. Loves it. Some people, he says, assume it's an affectation, but it just isn't so. "There is no distracting realism, the acting is terrible, and the characterisation is negligible, so all you are left with is the story. And that's what interests me. Stories. Ah, here's Harold Bishop. You must know Harold. Terrible old fusspot. He died and came back to life once. Ha!"
It is cosy in here, in its disappointingly un-Satanic way. We've been joined by Jude, Philip's wife, mother of their two grown-up sons. (One's a musician and the other is at Cambridge.) Jude used to be a teacher, too, and then a hypnotherapist. "Although," says Philip later, "not of the crazy sort. She helped people stop smoking." Jude always watches Neighbours with Philip. At the moment, Jude is hoping Michelle doesn't go back with Zac. "He's such a creep," she says. "He stood her up once." Philip, too, is hoping Michelle doesn't go back with Zac. "He's such a nerd, such a dork. Hogarth! Stop playing with your todger!"
Hogarth is not in Neighbours. Hogarth is one of the Pullmans' little pugs. The other is Millie. Hogarth and Millie both have adorable faces, like stepped-on toads, and stiff little tails that squiggle up in the shape of the "@" used in e-mail addresses. This, however, exposes the full geography of their bottoms. The full geography of their bottoms is not so adorable. Millie and Hogarth go "plff" and "shlff" a lot, although whether this noise comes from their front ends or back ends, I really couldn't say. Chances are it's the front end, although I couldn't guarantee that they're not the windiest pugs in Britain. It is quite smelly in here. Philip and Jude, I would suggest, are not a Haze sort of couple.
Anyway, I'd first arrived at his house quite a bit earlier. It's a modest house, in a modest, suburban street in Oxford. Inside, it is all doggy smells, and absolutely full of... stuff. This house makes Tony Benn's place look like something out of Wallpaper*. Books, papers, bric-a-brac, junk, pugs... they spill and teeter and "plff" everywhere. Spaces have to be cleared just to sit down. "Millie, off that chair! You'll have to just shove her off, I'm afraid." He says he's always embarrassed when people come over "because then I can see how truly squalid it is".
He works, actually, in a shed in the garden. Would I like to see it? You bet, I say. So off we go, through the garden, which is a great, muddy tangle of weeds and dog whotsit. "Mind the crap!" Philip cries cheerfully. I ask him if he's ever thought about putting himself up for Ground Force. A bit of blue decking here. A water feature there. A pug-a-loo behind that bush. Could make all the difference. "Ohh," he says, excitedly. "Could you put a word in?"
We reach the shed, which is, well, a shed. Inside, it is falling-off curtains and peeling old wallpaper and so much more stuff, you can't actually turn round in it. "It's the Iris Murdoch school of decoration," he says. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen? "Ohh, could you put a word in?" He thinks, actually, he and Jude might move soon, to somewhere bigger. After years as a teacher and then a writer who made a living, but not a substantial one, it is very nice to have money, at last. "I used to think the acme of wealth was being able to buy any book when and where you wanted it." And you can now? "Yes." Still, it hasn't all gone to his head. Lunch, when it comes, is toasted Mother's Pride with Marmite. Or would I prefer jam? I'm not saying it doesn't do. It does. I'm just saying that as far as phenomenally successful, mega-selling authors go, he is very un-Barbara Taylor Bradford-esque. She seems a very fragrant, Haze sort of person. Possibly, she never travels anywhere without it.
Whatever, in this shed, Philip does three pages of writing, in longhand, on A4 paper, every morning. Some mornings, it doesn't come as easily as others, but he always persists. "When you go to the doctor with a broken bone, he doesn't say, 'Sorry, I can't deal with that today, I've got doctor's block'. So why should writers get writer's block?" That said, though, he hasn't written since winning the Whitbread prize. It's the first time a book ostensibly for children (a lot of adults have co-opted The Amber Spyglass) has ever won the Whitbread. Was he nervous on the night? "I was in quite a Zen-like state, actually," he says, "because, by that point, there wasn't anything I could do about it. I couldn't suddenly gallop that much faster."
Now, though, there are so many fan letters to reply to. Up to 50 a day. It's flattering and everything but, still, it'll be nice when they fall off a bit and he can get back to what he does. He thinks his next book will be a picture book for younger children. He's hoping to illustrate it himself, has been to life-drawing classes. Trouble is, he can now only draw naked people. He wonders: "Do you think there's a market for a children's book of nudes?" Absolutely, I say. I think, even, that Peter Hitchens has put his name down for a copy already.
We talk sheds. Didn't Roald Dahl, I ask, work in a shed? Yes, he says, but he's not a great fan of Dahl. "On the whole, I don't enjoy his books. There's a degree of interest in cruelty that I find off-putting." Enid Blyton? I tell him I used to love Enid Blyton when I was a kid. Indeed, for years my dearest wish was to be dispatched to St Clare's or Malory Towers so I could exclaim "wicked!" when I made it into the lacrosse team and could then go and do something horrid to someone called Gwendolyn. He says that when he used to train teachers, and they said they'd loved Enid Blyton, he'd send them off to read her again. And? "They'd come back and say, 'We never realised it was such absolute trash'."
I must look pitifully crestfallen, because he then quickly adds: "I quite liked Noddy, though. When I was about five, I read a story about Noddy and Big- Ears building a house, and Noddy wanted to put the roof up before the walls because it was raining. I thought that very funny."
Pullman is no Dahl. Or Blyton. He is something else entirely. But I wasn't looking forward to reading The Amber Spyglass, the third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, which began with Northern Lights and continued with The Subtle Knife. I was dreading it, in fact. I hate "adventure fantasy" books. Truly, I'd rather eat my fist and sell my children into prostitution and have sex with Michael Fish than read "adventure fantasy". The thing is, I tell him, if it's fantasy and anything can happen, then I always think it doesn't really count somehow, and promptly lose interest. I like realism, and lots of lacrosse. "I know what you mean," he says. "The moment magic comes into it, it's sort of cheating?"
That's it. Exactly. He doesn't think his magic is quite like that, though. He hopes it's more an extension of the characters. "Plus, of course, I sometimes make sure the magic just doesn't work."
Now, while I hated the Chronicles of Narnia
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