Desmond Skirrow - Writing Career

Writing Career

While working as an advertising executive during the mid-1960s, Skirrow commuted daily between where he lived in Brighton to where he worked in London. There he wrote 1,000 words a day until he had a 70,000 word novel. This was It Won't Get You Anywhere, the first of three spy novels about fictional British agent John Brock. Like his creator, Brock works in advertising in London, but is also a part-time agent for an undercover department run by The Fat Man. Penthouse magazine said that both Brock and Skirrow were likeable, soft-hearted and rather shy. Skirrow denied that he himself and Brock had any similarity noting that his hair is blonde hair and Brock's is black. Further, according to Brian Ash, Skirrow "resembled a latter-day Chesterton." Ruth Martin, writing for Books & Bookmen, described Skirrow as "Tall, big, bearded and seemingly incapable of being serious for more than a few minutes at a time."

Two sequels followed: I Was Following This Girl, and I'm Trying to Give It Up, are tough, irreverent, and witty. Punch called them "the Chandler formula, basically, but louder and funnier." Penthouse said Skirrow's novels "between the punch-ups and chases and killings paint a wildly amusing cynical-eye view of the glossy, hysterical world of advertising."

Desmond Skirrow also wrote a children's book, The Case of The Silver Egg, which was televised as The Queen Street Gang. It involves the adventures of a group of boys tracking down a gang of villains. Books and Bookmen refers to an unpublished sequel.

Skirrow's frequently anthologized poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn Summarized" parodies John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn. First published in the New Statesman in 1960, it later appeared in the New Oxford Book of Light Verse edited by Kingsley Amis. Vanderbilt University subsequently coined the term "Skirrowing" to denote a terse parody of a great poetic work.

In 1963 Desmond Skirrow met Alida Haskins who showed him the maquette of Cowboy Kate & Other Stories by Sam Haskins. He then put words to the purely visual story devised by Sam and Alida. He was subsequently introduced, by Alida, to Sam's publisher, the Bodley Head in London, who went on to publish his thriller novels. Sam Haskins' next book November Girl was published in 1966 and Desmond Skirrow once again provided text for the melancholic visual story.

BBC Radio 2 Woman's Hour serialised It Won't Get You Anywhere between 2 and 13 November 1970.