Early Retirement for Adrian Mole: Sue Townsend to write two more diaries 'at a push'

Sue Townsend now dictates to her son, Sean, whose kidney she received in 2009 (Andrew Fox)

Sue Townsend has said she will only write two more Adrian Mole books “at a push”.

The 66-year-old author, who suffered a stroke at Christmas, feared her health would stop her from writing any more of the much-loved Mole diaries.

Townsend, a wheelchair user who became blind as a result of diabetic neuropathy, said her medical history meant that she “would not go on to make old bones”.

Her last instalment of the Adrian Mole diaries The Prostrate Years, which sees Mole in remission from prostate cancer, was drawn from her own experience of living with illness.

Since Adrian Mole first broke onto the literary scene in 1982 as a socially unaware “misunderstood intellectual”, Townsend’s diaries have proved popular among adults and teenagers with more than eight million copies of the diaries sold.

The publication of the next Adrian Mole, planned for release later this year, has been pushed back due to Townsend’s health. However, the author remained adamant that it would be published.

“It was on the way until the stroke interrupted me. I have not got to the coalition years yet. It won’t be [too long],” she told an audience at the Oxford Literary Festival. But she did say that the second of the unpenned books might be an epilogue.

Could the last instalment see Adrian finally wed Pandora?