INTRODUCTION

      How did it all start?

      When I was young and in want of cash (which was all the time) I used to trudge round to the local labour exchange during holidays from school and university to sign on for any job that was going – mason’s mate, loader for Speedy Prompt Delivery, part-time postman, 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 of throwing Irishmen through pub windows (men who had 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 the ‘brother-in-law’. The stories about these men (rarely about the speaker himself) were about being seduced, to put it genteelly, whilst on the job by (it always seemed to be) ‘a posh bird’:

      ‘Oeu-euh. Would you care for a cup of tea?’

      ‘And he was up her like a rat up a drainpipe’

      These stories were prolific. Even one of the – to my eyes – singularly uncharismatic workers had apparently been invited to indulge in carnal capers after a glass of lemonade one hot summer afternoon near Guildford.

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

      When writing the series, it seemed unrealistic and undemocratic that Timmy’s naive 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 fairer sex might cross his path.

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

      Whatever the truth concerning Timothy Lea’s origins, twenty-seven ‘Confessions’ books and four movies suggest that an awful lot of people share my fascination with the character and his adventures. I am grateful to each and every one of them.

      Christopher Wood aka Timothy Lea