Fungus the Bogeyman

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But Fungus is having an existential crisis “I am, yet what I am who knows … I am the self-consumer of my woes” and this philosophical turn gives the Bogeyman, despite everything, a likeable character.

This book was turned into a two-handed radio play with Peter Sallis in the male lead role, and subsequently an animated film, featuring John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft. It does so in a manner that is always fast paced and the reader is never easy as the turning of each page brings another revolting revelation. Questioning the meaning of life becomes more insightful and urgent, in a way, when the life in question is the antithesis of all we supposedly hold dear in our human world; the removal allows for a more dispassionate consideration of the existential void at the core of the universe than a realistic treatment would allow, but the humour mitigates the likelihood of despair. A co-production with Pilot Theatre, the show was directed and adapted by Marcus Romer and designed by Ali Allen. I mean, it’s a complete classic, although I do prefer Ug, Boy Genius of the Stone Age, for its philosophical musings, although the quotations from Southey, Clare, et al in this book do make me smile.

Because fact is that I have to use my strongest reading glasses throughout and still be constantly squinting, as especially the font size of the printed, of Biggs' presented text is so cramped and so minuscule in size to make easy and comfortable perusal nigh impossible (I have actually had to reread some sections more than a few times because my eyes accidentally kept missing and skipping entire chunks, this also being a further caveat for parents reading Fungus the Bogeyman with or to their children, and perhaps also a potential issue for recently independent readers attempting to read Fungus the Bogeyman by themselves, as they often read better and easier with larger and bolder print).

Written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs, a much loved children's author, perhaps best known for his Christmas classic, The Snowman. He is a bogeyman who goes to the surface each night to cause havoc (literally: things that go bump on the night). Fungus the Bogeyman is a lovingly created work of art, with as much care and thought in the words as in the images. You had to keep stopping in the story to have every aspect of life explained and then try to get back into the story again. For while Fungus' world and his daily life are indeed often minutely, engagingly and even in a strange way beautifully described and depicted (and the accompanying illustrations are gorgeously drawn and actually, amazingly sparkle with their very and often intense general ugliness), really and truly, for and to me, the constant and ever-present referrals to farting, vomiting, grottiness, slime, mould and the like does tend to become rather frustratingly dragging.

An immensely inventive picture book landmark enjoyed as much by adults as children, Briggs' incredibly detailed classic charts a day in the gleefully gross and disgusting life of the eponymous monster. Over a period of decades, a number of attempts were made to make a film from the book, which was difficult given its lack of an actual plot.