Ben Bailey Smith is an actor and writer, his alter ego Doc Brown is a stand-up comedian, a rapper and a writer. He has appeared on Blue Peter, both as a performer and a contributor to their reviews of children›s literature, and has been a storyteller on CBeebies Bedtime Stories.
In 2016, he released his first children›s book, I Am Bear; and followed up quickly with sequel, Bear Moves. His work Get a Move On!, is a comic tale of the school run aimed at five to eight year olds and Crumbs!, a book for early readers, has just been published by Bloomsbury.
Rapper, comedian, actor, voiceover artist… is there anything you can’t do?
Everything else! I’m not good with maths, sports, dance, science, technology… outside of writing and performing I’m basically useless!
You have written a few children’s books, which is your favourite?
My favourite is probably still my first, I Am Bear, just because it’s actually quite a weird tale, very much in that picture book tradition of the slightly surreal, like Hungry Caterpillar or Tiger Who Came to Tea – it’s a recognisable world for kids, but something is a little off – like why is the Bear purple? I love that kids don’t question stuff like that. Their imagination is way crazier than a purple bear.
A lot of parents will empathise with Maxine’s mum and dad in Get A Move On – morning stress is real. How do things shape up in your house in the mornings?
Exactly like that! That’s why I wrote it. My kids are teenagers now, but when they were in primary school, every single morning was a chaotic team effort and a desperate dash for the door!
What made you write your first book, I Am Bear? It was quite the career tangent.
It never felt like that for me. I had small kids so I’d been reading picture books for years and felt disappointed by a lot of the newer titles. I definitely felt I could do it, I just couldn’t draw. The conduit was Sav Akyüz, an old friend of mine I’d known for nearly twenty years. He’d drawn this purple bear and just sent it to me saying ‘I like this cheeky character, can you write him a rhyme?’ That was literally it. Within months we had the four biggest publishers in Europe battling for our signatures. That’s super unusual by the way. Normally a publishing house would sign an author and pair them with an established illustrator, but Sav invented Bear, it was his concept and I’d written the text so we were inseparable. Whenever any publisher that suggested I try other illustrators, I just said no deal.
And you have two more books in the pipeline, can you tell us about those?
Crumbs! Has just been published by Bloomsbury, another picture book for early readers, a classic comedy mystery about a farmer whose lunch gets stolen. But what I’m really, really excited about is my first novel, a middle grade comedy for older kids called Something I Said. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written – TV, music, stand up, whatever. This is my strongest piece of writing and I’m incredibly proud of it! It’ll be published worldwide in June this year.
Where do the ideas come to you from for your books?
Anywhere and everywhere. Bear and Crumbs! both came from Sav so you’d have to ask him! The rest of my work comes from snippets of conversations or experiences I’ve had. My novel is about a kid who becomes famous – that never happened to me as a kid but I have been a kid and I have experienced fame so I just put the two together… But most of the time ideas are sparked off conversations I have with people. Like, whatever people find funny or interesting (or ideally both!) within a conversation, that’s what I note down in my head for future use. In my experience, if a cross-section of five people around a table all find the same subject funny and interesting, chances are five million people could feel the same.
Out of all the strings you have in your bow, is there one you like best?
I like acting because it’s the only one I don’t have to do on my own. All the other jobs are super lonely – writing, voiceover, stand-up – they all require you to spend a lot of time on your own, in your own head. That can be really challenging and difficult over time.
Is there something you’d still like to achieve?
I’d like to voice a Disney/Pixar character.
It’s always a tough quetion, but we are going to ask it. Who is your absolute favourite author from your childhood?
It’s hard to look past Dahl. I still read him now! Literally re-reading Boy. Can’t think of another author who I read aged four, 14 and 40!
And favourite book from when you were a kid?
I don’t have a single standout but some of my absolute faves were The Twits by Roald Dahl, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, Mouse Gets Caught by Roger Hargreaves… If I was forced to pick one, Not Now Bernard by David McKee is one I often cite – it could be the most profound picture book I’ve ever read.
You’ve been to the UAE before, what were the highlights from your previous trips?
Yeah I’ve been a few times back in my stand up days I came over and played a bunch of venues in Dubai, Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. I was treated really well wherever I went, which was lovely. I saw the Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi on one visit, which was a trip! I loved going to the souks in Dubai.
Tell us one thing that nobody knows about you.
There are exactly 80 years between my Dad’s birth and my daughter’s birth – he fought in the second world war, which means if my daughter lives to 95, in the year 2100 she can say she physically met someone who was on the beaches in Normandy. Mind blowing.
