IT’S hard to imagine what my life would have been like were it not for Roald Dahl. While the super-socialist Mr Fox and his flair for the fantastic was clearly my entry-level drug in to Orwell’s 1984 and consequently Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, I loved the schadenfreude of The Twits and have an inane joy of over-sized peaches, thanks to James.
But there was something special about Charlie, he of The Chocolate Factory and The Glass Elevator fame. Of course, the notion of spending the day surrounded by confectionery captured my boyish imagination, but the chocolate was merely a foil. The real story was about karma, the ugliness of humanity and how good people can win. (Given the state of our world just now, that’s a comforting, if fictional, concept.)
Charlie was a working-class hero. As poor as dirt, he lived with his entire extended family. Both sets of his grandparents lived in the house, sleeping in the same bed. His parents worked hard for little money and life was a constant struggle. No wonder an Indian immigrant kid like me could relate closely to Charlie. Even though he was a white child. Or was he?
It transpires that Dahl had originally imagined Charlie to be a black child, from a black family, according to Roald’s widow, Liccy Dahl. When she was asked why the race of the eponymous hero was changed before publication she replied: “I don’t know. It’s a great pity.”
It’s a curiously discombobulating feeling to think that something one has a great affection for had originally been sketched as a different entity. Re-imagining the book with this new information, Dahl would have made a far more cutting political, social and economic point had he stuck to his guns. The reason why the change occurred might seem a mystery to Mrs Dahl but I suspect we all know exactly the motivation, as does the writer’s biographer, Daniel Sturrock.
“I can tell you that it was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black her … people would ask why?” Sturrock said.
I beg to differ. I feel this most profoundly. Charlie was a hero to a generation; he was a great kid, polite, morally sure and emotionally intelligent.
And now this news has been broken, all I can think of is the missed opportunity. The only reason people might have asked “why?” is if the character had been two-dimensional and partly sketched. It does seem a little ironic that we learn of this in the week after the US Tennis Open was won by the inspirational Sloane Stephens, the first American woman to win the title that wasn’t a Williams sister since 2002. Ranked 83, she was also the lowest ranked player to ever win the title. She is a breath of fresh air, bursting with personality, skill, class and humanity. Oh, and she’s African American.
And while glass ceilings are being shattered stateside, over here, broadcasting regulator Ofcom tells us something we already know, namely that the broadcasting industry is still failing, all these years on, to reflect the ethnic diversity of the viewers and listeners they serve. Maybe rather than asking why Charlie was a black kid, we should be asking why there are so many insurmountable obstacles for people of colour across every stratum of life.
As you may well know, my brother Sanjeev plays Navid in Still Game. The character is universally loved across Scotland. Navid is not a pleasant man; but he is a real man, a funny man, a believable man. My profound pride in my wee brother’s work goes beyond his impeccable comic timing and his excellent physical comedy. Navid (ergo Sanjeev) has changed the perception of the immigrant community in Scotland; a change no legislation could ever have delivered. I’m certain no-one thought tae ask Ford and Greg why the Craiglang shopkeeper was a Pakistani Muslim with an unending array of horrible tank tops. That is just the way they saw the character and in being allowed to realise their creative vision I firmly believe we live in a better Scotland for it.
Ya b******s, as Navid might say.
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