Wilt wilted

More sad news. Author Tom Sharpe is dead.

Way back in the 1970s, as a pre-teen I was an avid reader. My reading matter ranged from the works of Richmal Crompton and Enid Blyton to Roger Lancelyn Green and CS Lewis. But my Grandad was also a great reader, and his shelves contained books of a more intriguing nature. Grown-up books, full of murders, sex, spies and adventures - and a selection by a new (at the time) author by the name of Tom Sharpe. My very first "adult" book was probably his Indecent Exposure [a satirical, and very funny, farce taking the piss out of Apartheid South Africa], and I took on the - enjoyable - task from that moment on to read all of Mr Sharpe's books I could get my hands on.

With their riotous - and often quite deliberately offensive, in a Viz-type comic-strip way - covers by Paul Sample, these paperbacks were utterly fascinating to me as a teenager; each one a cartoon featuring bawdy large-breasted Rubinesque harridans, detailed depictions of unfortunate (usually sexual) mishaps and scenes of utter chaos, they were a pretty accurate indication of each book's contents. For Mr Sharpe certainly wrote into his novels numerous interweaving farcical predicaments and hilarious calamities, all inevitably brought together in some kind of explosive denouement. I loved them all!

It is no wonder his stories were such an attractive draw to TV producers - and indeed Wilt, Porterhouse Blue and (best of all) Blott on the Landscape were all hit series in the 1980s.

Apparently Tom Sharpe was in the process of writing his autobiography when he died. Such a shame his life story - in his own words - may now never be told.

RIP Thomas Ridley Sharpe (30th March 1928 – 6th June 2013)