TV: The strange tale of the storyteller

By Frances Grant

A cruel twist of fate deprived poor young James of his parents, gone to London for an innocent day's shopping.

"Both of them suddenly got eaten up - in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street - by an enormous, angry rhinoceros which had escaped from London Zoo."

Such a swift and gruesome end should be no laughing matter, but the excerpt from British writer Roald Dahl's book causes a giggle. What a wonderfully outrageous way of conveniently disposing of adults.

The story of the famous children's author, told tonight in the documentary Roald Dahl (in Prime's art etc series at 8.35, contains moments which would not be out of place in the works of the master of the modern fairytale grim.

His younger sisters, for example, tell of Dahl's boyhood fun and games. Their fond memories include Roald swathing one of them in cushions, getting her to climb up a tree and shooting her with his airgun to test how far the pellets penetrate.

The programme is both a portrait and a family history - striking, given the example cited above, for its lack of grudges.

Daughter Ophelia talks about Dahl as a father and her understanding of the experiences, particularly as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, which shaped his imagination.

She also tells of the bedtime stories in which some of those fabulous characters such as the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) and Fantastic Mr Fox first took form.

The picture which emerges is of a man devoted both to his family and to the solitude necessary for his creations. Dahl is described as a man with a gift for subversive hilarity but who was also a slightly distant and awesome figure to children.

His taste for the macabre is a theme of several anecdotes. A family friend tells how he passed an object round his dinner-guests and waited until all had tried to guess what it was before revealing it to be a souvenir piece of bone from his hip operation.

The documentary also includes an interview with Dahl, recorded five years before his death in 1990, in the small garden shed where he spent hours every day writing and pottering.

He explains the blend so characteristic of his fiction: "If you can make it grisly and funny then they [children] love it. So do I. That's why I do it."