Wallace E Briggs
The Original Inspiration
An interview with BSP's Claire Voet :
"In reality, the story came about because of a necessity - to entertain three or four children in the approximate age range 4 - 7 yrs. They had struck up a friendship with my son on the beach, on a family holiday to Great Yarmouth, over (almost) 50 years ago. The children were forced to shelter in our beach tent during a heavy shower. Not surprisingly they were quite boisterous. "For goodness sake," my wife, Pat, said. "Read them a story, or something to quieten them down."
As there were no story books to hand, I had to make up a story, “on the hoof”, as they say. I knew I needed a bit of magic to get their attention, so I created a witch. Observation of the small "playgroup" dynamics highlighted that there was an underdog in their group, it just happened that his hair was ginger. The idea blossomed, of a bullied child, who looked different, who overcame - and so Jimmy Crikey was borne to illustrate that it is possible to overcome apparent disadvantages and achieve great things. Otherwise, the adventures that Jimmy embarked upon were designed as pure escapism to keep their minds engaged for a while during the following several wet afternoons.
It was several years later during training in London for a new career that I decided to commit the stories to the written word. The train journey from Durham to Kings Cross was almost five hours long. There was plenty of time to be filled and one did need a diversion from the intense study required to come to terms with some very technical, scientific products. And so JC grew to fill a void."
In fact, over the course of a month there were three or four train journeys to "the South" during which the story was committed to the written word for others to enjoy.