The Diary of a Nobody the first, "The Diary of a Somebody", is a direct reference to the Grossmith original. Reviewing this volume in "The Spectator", Benny Green points out several parallels with the original, in both character and event. Matthew's book, says Green, is amusing, but the Grossmiths' book is superior; it is "affecting as well as comical, in a way that the Matthew pastiche is not". In 1982 came the first appearance of Sue Townsend's teenage creation, Adrian Mole, whose passage into young manhood and early middle age is charted in a long series of diaries. The more middle-aged he becomes, says Morton,
Adrian Mole grandfather. However, in "The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole", it is stated that his name was Arnold, and as Arthur in "Weapons of Mass Destruction". However, he is simply called Grandad Mole. Adrian's maternal grandparents, the Sugdens, have never had their names revealed, although Pauline has two brothers, Dennis and Pete. Dennis married a woman called Marcia, and they had a son called Maurice, and Pete married a woman called Yvonne, who had died.. Grandma Sugden had died twenty years previously, as of "The Lost Diaries". Adrian's aunt, Susan Mole, appears in most – if not all – of the