Sue Townsend

Robert Hanks interviews novelist Sue Townsend in The Independent.

For the last year she has been in a wheelchair, a consequence of a condition called Charcot's joint, in which the bones of the foot crumble. In her case, it is a complication of diabetes (she was diagnosed as diabetic in the mid-1980s, after a heart attack). But she looked it up and "I wasn't surprised to find out that this affliction is shared by lepers and people with syphilis. I kind of toyed with the idea of starting a club and seeing who turned up." She can still get up and down stairs, but "I can't walk with any grace. I can't walk far without swooning around the place."

Townsend's latest and possible last book, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, has just been published.