Supertato creator joins Festival of Chichester line-up

SussexWorld

Paul Linnet, co-creator of the bestselling Supertato picture books, joins this year’s Festival of Chichester to offer a fund-raiser for Chichester Children’s Bookfest.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sausage Newspapers and Chairman

00:06of the Festival of Chichester. And it's fantastic that Paul Lynette, co-creator of Supertato,

00:11is heading to Chichester for the Festival of Chichester as part of the Children's Book

00:16Fest, which runs through this year's Chichester Festival. And you will be in the Chichester

00:21Free School on Sunday, June 22nd at 10.30, talking about Supertato. And what a fantastic

00:28ride you've had with Supertato over 11 years. You couldn't have predicted it would take off,

00:35could you, in that way? I could never have predicted it, but I'm very happy that it has.

00:40And also, I quite like the idea of the pun of Supertato taking off. I mean, you know, it's...

00:45So how do you expect it? Does it all come down to silliness? Is that the point?

00:51It all comes down to silliness. It all comes down to silliness as a gateway to reading.

00:55And I think you can make children laugh. You can go some way to getting them to look

01:00at a book. And that's my mission.

01:04And that whole idea behind Supertato, explain it. Where did it come from?

01:10Supertato is born out of a love of superheroes that the co-creator, Sue Hendra and myself,

01:17have. The love of comic books. Me as a child reading lots of Tintin books.

01:22And then Marvel comics. And wanting to create our own superhero character.

01:29But also wanting that character to be quite humble.

01:32You know, nothing too grand. Nothing too...

01:35Sort of with a big, incredible backstory.

01:38And I couldn't think of anything more humble than a potato.

01:42And also the idea was, at the time, was there was an element of toys, you know, tie-in toys.

01:51They're always made out of plastic. They always cost lots of money.

01:55And in theory, you can just get a potato.

01:58If you wanted to play Supertato, you just get a potato.

02:01You can go one step further and draw eyes on it.

02:04You can make a cape for it. But basically, you just need a potato.

02:08There's no packaging. There's no plastic. And at the end of it, you can make soup.

02:13But that's only half the genius. The other half being your potato's nemesis.

02:19Yes, the evil pea. Well, obviously, even simpler.

02:22Obviously, the only problem with peas and why the evil pea is evil is if a pea comes out of the freezer,

02:29frozen pea, and obviously it defrosts and naturally turns bad, which is the backstory for the pea.

02:39It came about, actually, one of the reasons that triggered the pea idea was having to fix a fridge

02:46and pulling it out from the wall.

02:48And underneath the fridge is a pea.

02:51And I just thought...

02:52Always a pea, yeah.

02:53Exactly. There's always a pea. There's always a pea under the fridge.

02:58And, yeah, that's the evil pea in waiting.

03:03Now, the session that you'll be doing in Chichester, why is that going to be good fun?

03:06Obviously, it brings you in contact with your readers, doesn't it?

03:10I can... We can meet.

03:12I think... I don't know.

03:13There may be a... It depends on how the festival wants to run it,

03:17but there may be a Q&A afterwards.

03:19I've certainly got to say hello to everybody.

03:23I'll get to talk a little bit about books.

03:25I'll get to talk about Supertato.

03:26There'll be some stories.

03:27There'll definitely be some singing.

03:29There'll be some drawing, high-quality drawing, of course.

03:33There'll be a training session.

03:34I fully expect everyone to be ready to learn how to be superheroes

03:37because I've got some seriously difficult training for them to go through in the show.

03:43Well, you make it sound highly appealing.

03:46Paul, you'll be at Chichester Free School on Sunday, June the 22nd at 10.30am

03:51as part of the Chichester Children's Book Fest,

03:54which is this year part of the Festival of Chichester.

03:57Really lovely to speak to you.

03:58Thank you very much indeed.

04:00Thank you very much.

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