The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, a novel by Sue Townsend, is the 2nd book in the Adrian Mole series, following on from "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾". It focuses on the worries and regrets of a teenage aspiring intellectual. The novel is included in the omnibus "". The book is written in a diary style and set in 1982 through to mid-1983. Notable events in this volume are the breakup and later reconciliation of Adrian and Pandora, Adrian's attempt to run away from home and subsequent breakdown, the birth of
The Diary of a Nobody more than 15 million copies in 40 countries. In the 1990s the satirical magazine "Private Eye" lampooned John Major, British prime minister 1990–97, in "The Secret Diary of John Major aged 47", a hybrid of the Adrian Mole diaries with "The Diary of a Nobody", which made much fun of Major's lower-middle class origins. The social historian James Hammerton defines "Pooterism" as "the dependent weakness and inflated social pretension of white-collar workers, constructed in the workplace but expressed just as powerfully at home". Jon Wilde of "The Guardian" observes this characteristic in a number of British TV comedy creations of