A Q&A interview with Doug Naylor

Doug Naylor is an Emmy-award-winning television director and successful novelist for adults, probably best known as the co-creator of Red Dwarf (with Rob Grant). Now he’s turned his hand to children’s books with Sin Bin Island, a funny, inventive and hugely enjoyable boarding school-pirate-magic adventure story. He answers our questions about the book in this Q&A.

You are a very successful writer for TV. What drew you to write a book for children?

I got an idea that wouldn’t go away. It was like a stray dog that seemed to follow me wherever I went. I even dreamt it. It flooded my daydreams. I saw an air steward on a plane and found myself writing into my phone. ‘Her eyebrows were thick and black and looked as if a fairy with muddy boots had down the splits on her forehead.’

I grew up on stories where comedy and adventure crash into each other — from Jennings and Tom Sawyer to the anarchic humour of Red Dwarf. I wanted to bring that same spirit to a new generation, mixing boarding-school life with a mysterious island once used by pirates to smuggle treasure back to the mainland.

But beneath the laughs there’s a serious streak, I hope. Real treasure isn’t just gold — it was sugar, tobacco, dyes, all fortunes built on suffering. I wanted Sin Bin Island to smuggle in some of that truth too, so it’s not only funny but also a story with weight.

Mostly, though, I wrote Sin Bin Island to create a world readers can live in. Children’s books aren’t just stories — they become part of you. Sin Bin Island has certainly become part of me, and I can’t wait to finish the second book in the series.

What were your favourite children’s books or childhood reading?

Winnie the Pooh, Roy of the Rovers, comics like Superman and Batman, The Famous Five, Swallows and Amazons, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Alistair Maclean’s Where Eagles Dare.

How did you use your background in scriptwriting when writing Sin Bin Island?

I knew I wanted the main gang to number four, to be different from one another, have unique flaws, but ultimately to come together in a team like the posse do in Red Dwarf. I wanted the dialogue to sizzle and have lots of laughs but also, I wanted the book to go to places very few TV shows can afford to go.

You mix school story, pirate adventure and magic in the story. What was the starting point?

I started off thinking about a story about a crashed flying saucer which two young kids find and go on board, and the saucer takes off and crashes and they wind up in Area 51 and the people there mistake them for aliens. The saucer needed to crash somewhere private, and it would be better if the kids didn’t have parents worrying about where they were.  I know, I thought, I’ll write about this orphanage where the worst behaved kids are sent to an island for a week, that’s private and then smugglers and magic and getting merits and demerits took over and I eventually dropped the flying saucer part.

Why are boarding school stories still so popular as settings for children’s stories? What did you enjoy most about creating Cyril Snigg’s Correctional Orphanage for Wayward Girls and Boys?

Orphans and boarding schools have always been popular. Orphans don’t have parents to report to and boarding schools mean you get to live with your friends which is very handy for having adventures. Also, I went to a school with madly eccentric teachers, where one punishment was to cut the school lawn with a pair of nail scissors.

Which do you find more fun to write: heroes or villains?

I like writing characters we care about, who make us laugh. Villains should scare us not make us laugh so I lean toward comic heroes but, I admit, many people say it’s more fun writing villains. Not for me though.

How well would you do if stranded on a desert island? Or indeed, at a school using a pirate-based curriculum?

At first, I would be hopeless and do everything wrong but slowly, gradually, I’d get better and probably end being pretty good so long as I didn’t starve to death first.

I would be very interested in learning how to fire cannons and sword fight, that’s for sure.

Will Digs be back for more lashes in a new adventure?

Indeed, he will. I hope to write many more books in the series. There will be at least three and probably more. In the next book, Return to Sin Bin Island, Seaforth and the Boneheads hear the rumours about hidden treasure on Sin Bin Island, and start to get even more lashes than Digs and the gang. Who will win?

Sin Bin Island is published by David Fickling Books, 978-1788453707, £7.99 pbk.