A TV producer’s dreams of becoming a novelist have borne fruit – after 15 years.

WHEN AA Milne created Winnie the Pooh for his son Christopher Robin, he thought the quaint bear would put a smile on the little boy’s face.

At first he was right. But when the child became Mr Milne himself, he was repeatedly embarrassed to be recognised as the real Mr Christopher Robin.

TV drama producer Charles Elton heard this sad story and used it for the inspiration for Mr Toppit, the story of Luke Hayman, the teenager whose father Arthur writes The Hayseed Chronicles, which become bestsellers after his death in a road accident in London’s Soho.

Luke, like Christopher Robin, becomes plagued by fans who want to find out more about him, and find out how he inspired his fictional alter ego.

Mr Toppit has just been published by Viking, the Penguin imprint, and Mr Elton, 55, is delighted that Penguin has pulled out all the stops to promote his first novel.

The promotional drive included a full-page spoof advert in The Times on the day of publication, and a website dedicated to some of the characters in the book.

There have also been rumours of a bidding war and a six-figure advance paid to the author, whose lips are sealed about the contract.

“I’m very grateful that Penguin has pushed the boat out,“ Mr Elton told The Guide.

“Whatever anyone paid, I’m proud that I wrote the book I wanted. If publishers had turned the book down, I would have been vaguely disappointed, but I was not writing it for money.

“The novel has taken me about 15 years to finish, and the reason it took me so long is that I’m a TV producer, and I have had young kids – there were many excuses not to do it.

“I had no deadline and could take as much time as I wanted – it was a hobby.

“There was a period of about two years when I didn’t touch it, but I have a very good memory and was able to pick up the characters exactly where I had left them. I didn’t plan anything, and I never made any notes, but by the time I got halfway through I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. I cut quite a lot from the first half.”

Mr Elton, who is giving a talk at the Woodstock Bookshop on Monday, told The Guide he had not ruled out a sequel to Mr Toppit.

But his next novel (he has written about 20,000 words of it) will be completely unrelated, and will focus on the activities of another dysfunctional family.

The author is currently taking a break from his career as a TV producer to concentrate on fiction.

In the past, he has worked as a literary agent for Curtis Brown and dealt with the estates of AA Milne and CS Lewis for “film and TV”.

Mr Elton said: “The Winnie the Pooh stories were written in the 1920s, and became huge international bestsellers.

“As a result, Christopher Robin because famous, but he retreated and eventually ended up running a bookshop in Devon.

“When I started writing the book, some of the most famous kids' books were still AA Milne’s, but then halfway through Harry Potter came along and that gave me added momentum.

“Mr Toppit is quite dark in places. Having worked for ITV drama, I have worked with lots of well-known actors and I know that being famous or rich does not make you happy.

“My book deals with what happens to people when they become famous even though they are not seeking fame.“ I asked the author, who lives in London, if he had considered writing The Hayseed Chronicles themselves, but he claimed to have “no idea” what happened in them.

Perhaps he is all too aware of just how obsessive fans of Mr Toppit could become.

Mr Toppit by Charles Elton is published by Viking, price £12.99. His talk at the Woodstock Bookshop in Oxford Street, Woodstock, starts at 7.30pm. For further information, telephone 01993 812760.