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THE BURGLAR DIARIES
Published: 2001 Plot outline: Bex and Ollie are a couple of small-time and small-town domestic burglars. They do enough to keep themselves in beer and out of work and have no ambition beyond stealing. Narrator Bex talks and walks us through a dozen note-worthy jobs and give us his thoughts on life, love and nicking. Influences: Porridge , Minder , Only Fools and Horses , Auf Weidersein Pet , Hancock's Half Hour (in particular, Sidney James' character), The Phil Silvers' Show . Some of the funniest and most memorable characters are those dodgy, dishonest crooks, who'd skin their own grans, but are deep-down (very deep in Bilko's case) basically okay guys who retain a few basic principles that surface from time to time and surprise everyone. This was the thinking behind Bex, though all of the above did it with much more class. Crossovers: In chapter nine, the “serious-looking geezer” they meet carrying the hold-all into Electric's is Chris Benson, narrator of The Bank Robber Diaries . This same scene plays out in his book from his point of view. Also, Bex and Ollie's hometown (which is a small, nameless and fictional, but just like half the towns in this country) is the setting for Milo's Marauders . Bex and Ollie are mentioned in the book, but Norris and Parky (two burglars from The Burglar Diaries ) and Weasel and Ross (coppers from The Burglar Diaries ) and Charlie Taylor (Bex's brief) are some of the main characters. Also, see Milo’s Marauders and Milo’s Run crossovers. Television Development: The Burglar Diaries was
filmed and screened on BBCThree during January 2007 and repeated July - August 2007 as Thieves Like
Us. Foreign translations: Also published/to be published in French by Michel
Lafon, Russian by AST, Czech by Argo, Spanish by La Factoria de Ideas,
Italian by Kowalski and Taiwanese by Sharp Point. |
