After a major rehaul to update the author’s work to match modern sensibilities, his publishers were surprised to find that they had erased his entire catalogue. Confessed one editor: ‘Once we trimmed out all the references to fat, ugly and annoying characters, we were left with ‘they lived happily ever after’ and a doodle of peach.’
Complained an avid fan: ‘Who wants to read ‘Charlie and the Vegan Allotment’, ‘The moderately impressive, non-gender specific fox’ or ‘Danny, just another symbol of the patriarchy’? Some art is meant to be provocative; if I wanted something bland and inoffensive I’d have commissioned a nativity play starring James Corden.’
Dahl’s rewritten texts will feature perfectly lovely people being perfectly lovely to each other – where the only villain is Jordan Peterson. The editor said: ‘The title of ‘The Twits’ was already toned down from ‘The ClusterF$ckers’ – or the ‘Brexiteers’ for short.’