The Twits. A book I'd look to see on the big screen.

A right pair of bastards

I'd do bad things to see Roald Dahl's 'The Twits' turned into a live action film.

The Twits is a wonderful book, dark but hilarious in that way only Dahl could do. Me and my brother read it numerous times as children and cried laughing at it everytime. It was the first time I'd read a children's book that contained characters so unabashedly nasty. It was also full of queasy Quentin Blake illustrations that made you squirm when you looked at them but of course that just made you look even closer.

It's the story of an absolutely vile couple. Mr and Mrs Twit. A pair of hateful morons. They despise everything. Animals. The neighbourhood children. Each other. They spend their lives shut inside their house, only emerging to trap birds to put into their bird pies. They are both miserable and spend their time devising ingenuous plans to make each other even more miserable. Glass eyeballs are popped into pints of beer. Worms are mixed into spaghetti. One amazing plan sees tiny discs of wood gradually added to the bottom of furniture and a walking stick to make a person assume they are slowly shrinking. Eventually people become sick of them and their nastiness and use some of the Twit's own tricks to get revenge.

All the nasty fun aside there's a great moral to the story too. It's about what happens to people when they become too filled with hate and spite. What happens when you let it take control of you. How inner ugliness starts to show on the outside too. (See the pic of Mrs Twit below). The dangers of a toxic relationship.

As for who could play them. They'd have to be British actors. Definitely. Or maybe Irish. We both share that same warped sense of humour.


Mrs Twit. 

The progress of Mrs Twit

I'd love to see Kathy Burke in the role. She's a brilliant actress and comedian, does grumpy and frumpy excellently, and one who can be hilariously filthy at times. Waynetta Slob anyone? Throw on a fright wig, a fake nose and chin and a handful of warts and she'd be the perfect Mrs Twit.


Mr Twit.

Mr Twit's beard still makes me shudder 30 years later

I'd love to see an actor noted for playing upper crust characters take on Mr Twit. Hugh Laurie maybe. Mark Rylance or Michael Sheen(he'd be great).  I'd pay good money to see any of those with a scraggly beard taking on a plate full of wriggly spaghetti. Wait a minute! Brendan Gleeson could be awesome in this. Imagine that ginger beard full of food scraps. Lovely.

Dahl's films have a pretty good history of being adapted well to film. Willy Wonka (the first one) & The Witches perfectly captured the light and dark so prevalent in his books. Matilda was lovely fun and although I wasn't a fan of either The BFG or Fantastic Mr Fox, both were very well received. 

Roald Dahl originally wrote this book because he hated beards, hated men who grew them. Imagine what he'd think of today.

C'mon someone and make it please. It would be deadly.