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When I was young and in want of cash (all the time), I used to trudge round to the local labour exchange during school and university breaks and sign on for any job that was going – mason’s mate, loader for Speedy Prompt Delivery, part time postman etc, etc.

During our tea and fag breaks (‘have a go and have a blow’ was the motto) my fellow workers would regale me with stories of the Second World War: (‘very clean people, the Germans’), or throwing Irishmen through pub windows (the latter apparently crossed the Irish sea in hard times and were prepared to work for less than the locals). This was interesting, but what really stuck in my mind were the recurring stories of the mate or brother-in-law – it rarely seemed to be the speaker – who had been seduced, to put it genteelly, whilst on the job by (it always seemed to be) ‘a posh bird’: “Ew. Would you care for a cup of tea?” ‘And he was up her like a rat up a drainpipe’. Even one of the – to my eyes – singularly uncharismatic SPD drivers had apparently been invited to indulge in carnal capers after a glass of lemonade one hot summer afternoon in the Guildford area.

Of course, this could all have been make believe or urban myth but, but I couldn’t help thinking – with all this repetition – surely there must be something there?

It seemed unrealistic and undemocratic that Timmy’s naïve charms should only appeal to upper class women, so I quickly widened his demographic and put him in situations where any attractive member of the fair sex might come across him or, of course, vice versa.

The books were always fun to write and never more so than when involving Timmy’s family: Mum, Dad – prone to nicking weird objects from the lost property office where he worked – sister Rosie and, perhaps most important of all, conniving, would-be entrepreneur, brother in law Sidney Noggett, Timmy’s eminence greasy, a disciple of Thatcherism before it had been invented.

One day I woke up and had a brilliant idea. Why not a female Timothy Lea? And so was born Rosie Dixon, perhaps a gentler, more romantic flower than Timmy; always bending over backwards to do the right thing and preserve herself – mentally of course, that was very important – for Mr Right, but finding that things kept getting on top of her. In retrospect I regret that I did not end the series with Rosie and Timmy clashing in a sensual Gotterdammerung, possibly culminating in wedlock. Curled up before the glowing embers they would have had much to tell each other – or perhaps not tell each other.

Anyway, regardless of Timmy’s antecedents and Rosie’s moral scruples it is clear that an awful lot of people – or, perhaps, a lot of awful people – have shared my interest in the couple’s exploits and I would like to say a sincere ‘thank you’ to each and every one of them.

Christopher Wood, a.k.a. Timothy Lea/Rosie Dixon