When I began doing stand-up comedy in the 80s, there were only a handful of women doing the same thing – and if there were more than that, I didn’t meet them. The few who’d started on the circuit three years before me (although I was three years older) were already on TV. So I always felt older than my contemporaries – but ahead of my time in terms of normality.

And so, it is extra special to be celebrating a funny writer who was slightly older than me, even, when she started.

While I was taking my first relieved bow at the Comedy Store and legging it before any male comic could proffer helpful advice as to how to do it better, the late Sue Townsend was a 36-year-old unknown writer introducing Adrian Mole (then called Nigel) in a BBC Radio 4 play in 1982.

If only we had met. The joy of meeting a funny person who manages to capture wit in every single sentence is on a par with meeting God. And I’m not alone. In 2017, when given the Bible and complete works of Shakespeare on her episode of Desert Island Discs, the writer Caitlin Moran said, “Yeah thanks, but I won’t need the Bible or Shakespeare. You can keep them. I’m taking The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, please.”

So, it’s no accident that Moran has written the foreword for the 40th anniversary edition of the same title, published by Townsend’s original publisher, Penguin, in October. Nor is it an accident that the Comedy Women in Print (CWIP) prize has decided to commemorate Townsend with a “legacy achievement award” next year.

Her name will be celebrated among friends and champions. We can finally put an end to the question, “Where are the female literary comedic role models?” because, as an elder myself, it’s the least I can do. And although some may cite Jane Austen as the original “subliminal witty social commentator”, there’s nothing like a bold contemporary romp through the class divide written by Townsend to connect us to the human condition.

CWIP is now in its fourth year. My aim was to set up a literary prize to celebrate witty women authors – for the simple reason that there wasn’t one, and, admittedly, to appease my own bitterness for being slighted (real and imagined).

I was one of those teenagers who wrote secret, excruciating poems myself (eg “This is a nightmare party, goading gushing hearty… ”), so it was especially heartening to learn that Townsend wrote secretly for 20 years before her success. Her work offers a witty, prophetic commentary, making her ahead of her time – even Ben Elton wasn’t satirising the Queen and feminism in quite so much detail on Saturday Night Live.

Adrian’s musings on Margaret Thatcher were deliciously didactic: “I’m not sure how I will vote. Sometimes I think Mrs Thatcher is a nice, kind sort of woman. Then the next day I see her on television, and she frightens me rigid. She has got eyes like a psychotic killer, but a voice like a gentle person. It is a bit confusing.”

Understatement, observation, and satirised social pretentiousness spill out of any of her novels – which, as I discovered, also make great teaching tools. On the few rare occasions I’ve been invited to teach comedy novel writing, I’ve been eternally grateful for this material, especially when trying to demonstrate witty narrative as opposed to picking it apart, which is a killer. Most of us want to be inspired by laughing rather than overawed with apparent technique. And if I’m invited to find an “amusing” reading to complement the more serious Bible readings from various celebrities for a charity Christmas service, I’m very quick to offer my nativity play extracts taken from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾.

I am in an experimental Nativity play at school. It is called Manger to Star. I am playing Joseph. Pandora is playing Mary. Jesus is played by the smallest first year. He is called Peter Brown. He is on drugs to make him taller.”

This is where I get the first laugh.

Today’s rehearsals of Manger to Star was a fiasco. Peter Brown has grown too big for the crib. Mr Scruton sat at the back of the gym and watched rehearsals. He had a face like the north face of the Eiger by the time we’d got to the bit where the three wise men were reviled as capitalist pigs.”

He took Miss Elf into the showers and had a ‘Quiet Word’. We all heard every word he shouted. He said he wanted to see a traditional Nativity play, with a Tiny Tears doll playing Jesus and three wise men dressed in dressing gowns and tea towels. This is typical of Scruton, he is nothing but a small minded, provisional, sexually inhibited fascist pig.

Some recognition laughter from the younger congregation.

Pandora and I had a private Mary and Joseph rehearsal in my bedroom. We improvised a great scene where Mary gets back from the Family Planning Clinic and tells Joseph she is pregnant. The dog was supposed to be the lowly cattle, but it wouldn’t keep still enough to make a tableau.

This is where I usually glance at the vicar and am relieved to see that he is laughing.

Sue Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946. Despite not learning to read until she was eight and leaving school at 15, she later joined a writers’ group at The Phoenix Theatre in Leicester and won a Thames TV award for her first play. With nine Adrian diaries and seven standalone novels, she kept writing. Was it something about Leicester or seizing a writing opportunity – or both?

Another wonderfully witty writer, Nina Stibbe, who is also from Leicester and who won the published CWIP award in 2020 with Reasons to be Cheerful, says about Townsend: “The author that influenced my writing more than any other is Sue Townsend. I’d just begun experimenting with writing styles (who is telling the story and why?) when my boss thrust a copy of the newly published The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ into my hands, I saw that contemporary characters living ordinary, neurotic lives could be funny and compelling.”

CWIP also offers an unpublished author the chance to become published by HarperCollins. This is a dream come true for many writers, as past unpublished winners have testified. With a short story genre added this year with Farrago, the hope is to appreciate women’s wit with meaningful opportunities and to create recognition and renewed awareness where it has been lacking.

By honouring Townsend, albeit posthumously, we want to celebrate the joy of clever, witty, satirical work that both holds us accountable and makes us laugh – like a drain.

The Comedy Women In Print prize entries open on Monday 5 Sept and close on Friday 14 October

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