Does the thirtieth anniversary of the first publication of the Secret Diary feel like a milestone or a millstone?

A milestone. He’s certainly not a millstone.

I think that authors who complain about the success of their most well-known characters are fools; although they mostly do this in private.

How did you spend your thirtieth birthday?

Nursing a month-old baby called Elizabeth; she was the last of my four children.

How has Adrian changed over the last thirty years?

In The Prostrate Years Mole has become more physically attractive, and is a much more sympathetic character.

Which is your favourite Adrian Mole book?

The Prostrate Years. I’ve had a lot of health problems and wanted to write about serious illness, yet still write in a comic form.

Do you have a favourite diary entry from the last thirty years?

Saturday April 3 1982 – The last line in the last entry of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4. Written after he had tried glue sniffing and accidentally stuck a model aeroplane to his nose:

‘I rang Pandora, she is coming round after her viola lesson. Love is the only thing that keeps me sane…’

I also like the sequence of entries in the same book made when Mole was trying to paint his bedroom black to cover the Noddy wallpaper; only to be repeatedly thwarted by the bell on Noddy’s hat.

What has been Adrian’s biggest mistake?

To ignore the many persons who have told him that his serial killer comedy, ‘The White Van’, and his memoir ‘Lo, the Flat Hills of my Homeland’, are unpublishable. Mole does not suffer from a lack of self-belief in this regard.

At the Dept of the Environment when he misplaced a decimal point, and erroneously stated that the projection of live newt births for Newport Pagnall was 120,000.

And his greatest triumph?

He still believes his awful novels will be published one day.

That he is still a decent, kind person.

If Adrian Mole was a teenager today, what would he be doing and writing about?

He would be exactly the same, but he wouldn’t be using Twitter to memorialize his life. He would keep a secret diary. Mole’s privacy is still intact. He would not use social networking.

There are still Mole types everywhere, watching the absurdities of the world from the sidelines.

Are there any plot decisions that you made that you subsequently regretted?

I should not have made Bert Baxter so old. I hated it when I had to kill him off at the age of 105.

I regret Mole’s marriage to Jo Jo, and the subsequent birth of William. It was tiresome (as it is in life) to have the child constantly there, or having to account for his whereabouts. It restricted Adrian’s movements. He always had to be at the nursery at 3.15 p.m. every weekday. I solved this for myself by sending William to live with his mother in Nigeria, and then forgot about him.

Are any of the characters in the books, such as Adrian, Pandora or Pauline, based on anyone in particular?

All those characters have elements of the author within them.

Before you put pen to paper, was there any point where Adrian might have been a girl? If so, did she have a name?

No, girls are more sociable, they talk to each other about their emotional lives; boys don’t.

I once wrote a column for the London Evening Standard, which took the form of a diary written by a teenage girl called Christabel Fox. It didn’t work for me, and after eighteen months it didn’t work for the Evening Standard either.

What does the future hold for Adrian?

I don’t know, but hopefully he will go onward, ever onward.

What limitations/opportunities are there to writing in diary form?

There are no limitations. The diary is one voice talking to you about people, places, events, high emotion, low spirits and the minutiae of everyday life.

Diaries have a simple structure. You just plod on, day by day, week by week, month by month, until you’ve written a book.

What do you enjoy/dislike about the process of writing?

With each writing project I have a different type of nervous breakdown. I am convinced that I have chosen wrong words and placed them in the wrong order. Once published, I never read my own work.

There are sometimes a few exhilarating moments when the words come easily, when the tone and rhythm feel right.

It’s great that writers don’t have to leave the house and struggle through the rain to their place of work. They can lie in bed all day with a pen and notebook, which are the minimum requirements. Unfortunately I cannot allow myself to loll about in bed for longer than about six hours, as I am still brainwashed by the Calvinist work ethic.

Which authors have most influenced you as a writer?

In rough chronological order:
Richmal Crompton, Charlotte Brontë, Alfred E. Nuemann (Mad comic), Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Dickens, George Elliot, Oscar Wilde, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Stella Gibbons, Iris Murdoch, Flaubert, John Updike, Richard North.

Do you get much opportunity to meet or interact with your readers?

I have become a recluse lately as a result of ill health and late-onset shyness, but on rare outings I like to meet readers.

Is there any truth to the rumour put about by one A. Mole that you stole and profited from his life?

Yes. I ruthlessly exploited him. But he can’t afford to sue me due to the new legislation on legal aid. Mole no longer qualifies. He should have taken me to court years ago.