Children's TV boss Cas Lester on her dream of writing children's books

She may miss the camaraderie and excitement of a career in television but there’s one thing executive turned author Cas Lester isn’t missing in the slightest – the daily three to four hour commute between her home in Oxford and London.

“The worst thing was missing being with my four children,” says Cas, who now has no further to go than up and down stairs at her home in Water Eaton. “There were days when I hardly saw them or days when I was so tired I’d fall asleep reading to them when I was putting them to bed.

“ I sometimes think that’s why they learned to read, so they could finish the story while I slept beside them, snoring softly.”

But it’s clear Cas, no matter how exhausted, did make time for her four children despite her demanding job at the BBC.

When we talk at her home she’s just finished making her daughter’s 12th birthday cake.

“We worked out it was my 67th – it would have been 68 but I had chicken pox one time and had to buy one,” says Cas who makes a special cake for each of her children – Alfie, 21, Bertie, 19, who are both at university, and Archie, 16, and Annie, 12 – every year.

And it’s not just her own children Cas has made happy.

In her role as head of children’s drama development and as an executive producer for the BBC she brought a host of favourites to the screen, including The Story Of Tracy Beaker (starring Dani Harmer); Big Kids (starring Imogen Stubbs); Kerching!; Oscar Charlie, and Jackanory specials with Ben Kingsley narrating The Magician Of Samarkand and John Sessions narrating Muddle Earth.

It was a career path Cas had always dreamed of taking.“By the time I was a teenager I knew I wanted to work in television but it seemed a far too audacious thing to want to be – so I didn’t tell anyone,” says Cas, who was expelled half way through sixth form (“for moving in with the man I later married and am still with”) so took A-levels at college and then went on to do history at Cardiff University.

“When I left university I moved to Bristol and worked on a newspaper for a while but it really wasn’t me. So I joined the BBC in Bristol as a secretary, which was, er, interesting – I couldn’t type accurately to save my life. I still can’t. Thank God for auto correct.”

For a while she worked on the local news programme in Bristol.

“It was when I was standing in the newsroom watching a BBC children’s drama being transmitted on one of the monitors that I realised I was standing in the wrong place. I just knew there and then that I wanted to make programmes for children,” she says.

Moving to London, she worked firstly in the schools department and in children’s drama, rising to head development.

Cas – who is married to Mike (he and the children have the surname Cole), a science technician at Wheatley Park School – might have happily stayed at the BBC but then the corporation made a move that eclipsed even the Oxford/London commute.

“CBBC moved to Manchester, and I didn’t,” says Cas.

Cas Lester with her “daft dog called Bramble” walking in fields near her home. “Bramble and I do agility training,” says Cas. “She’s brilliant. I’m rubbish.”

“I couldn’t. My children were all happily settled in Oxfordshire primary and secondary schools, and our lives and friends were and still are all rooted here. If I’m honest, I had long wanted to write and especially children’s books.

“But with four children, a demanding job and a daily commute somehow there wasn’t time. And if there’d had been any spare time them I would have preferred to spend it playing with my children anyway.”

Finally having the time to write, Cas gave herself a year to pursue a new career as a children’s author.

“The most important thing I knew from being involved with so many TV scripts is that ‘writing is re-writing’, so I thought I’d start with something short so I wouldn’t find it too daunting to re-write it... lots of times if necessary.

“I sent it to an agent and she liked it and said she’d represent me.

“Sadly the picture book hasn’t made it into print (yet!) but she suggested I try writing for older children.

“So I wrote a couple of books, one of which was Harvey Drew And The Bin Men From Outer Space and she sent them off to various publishers and got me a three book deal. I can’t tell you how brilliant that felt for a first time writer. I was both thrilled and astounded.”

Cas looks set to be as successful in her second career as her first.

The second Harvey Drew novel, Harvey Drew And The Bling Bots, was published this month and there’s a third (and possibly fourth) on the way.

OUP children’s books have commissioned a series of books about a mischievous tomboy fairy for five- to seven-year-old readers, Nixie The Bad Bad Fairy, and she’s writing her first adult novel too.

And while working in children’s TV may have been a great apprenticeship, Cas has taken inspiration from her own family too, basing Nixie on her daughter.

“She’s the youngest and the only girl and perhaps not surprisingly, a real tomboy,” says Cas.

“So when she was given a fairy costume when she was about four, she liked to wear it with Wellington boots and a green plastic army hat.

“It was a great look and in my mind The Bad Bad Fairy was born.”

CAS ON HER WRITING

One of my children is dyslexic and so I’ve seen how hard the journey to literacy can be for some children.

I wanted to write books that are funny, full of adventure and easy to read. I chose to write about space because I think it’s awesome.

Perhaps because one of my most significant memories as a child was watching man landing on the moon. And we’re at the dawn of a new space age now, with plans for space tourism and even colonising Mars. Children are fascinated and often surprisingly knowledgeable about space.

When I sat down to write the books the word Toxic floated into my brain, attached itself to the word Spew and stuck there.

For sometime I struggled to discover who this Toxic Spew character could be. Then a writer friend suggested I call the space ship the Toxic Spew, and then it seemed obvious really to make it a garbage ship.

Once I started researching space junk it seemed such a perfect subject for comedy science fiction.

In the Harvey Drew books I particularly wanted to play with narration. Television drama very rarely has a narrator – so getting to play with this device was new for me. Also, I love those moments when you’re reading with your child and you turn to them and make a comment about the story. It’s a lovely intimate feeling and I wanted to explore that. So in the Harvey Drew books there are asides in a different font, where the narrator speaks directly to the reader (usually being highly sarcastic and critical of Earth’s limited attempts at space exploration).

I’m writing the third Harvey Drew book now, Harvey Drew And The Junk Skunks, as part of an online writing project with school children run by the publishers Hot Key Books and launched at Oxford’s Story Museum in Sept (thestoryadventure.com).

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