By Aliyah, Y9

On the 13th May, an author visited Manchester Academy to talk to us about how he got into the position of writing books. He was called John O'Farrell and besides being an author, he had also created his own website - www.newsbiscuit.com.

• He told us how he uses his imagination to get funny ideas about celebrities and other characters. We were told to imagine Amy Winehouse in the morning. He said she wouldn't be reading a bible for sure, but she might be doing her hair while birds come flying out or as she makes tea; or, what makes us think that it is really sugar in the pot? Could it be some other powder? Or Michael Jackson could be moon walking to get his breakfast when his nose falls of and he has to attach it with glue.
  
  One thing that everyone agreed on is that Wayne Rooney would make a perfect Shrek if we changed his skin colour and enlarged his ears! He told us that the personality of the character gives him the idea to make his character funny and more realistic at the same time.
  
  Ever thought that Amy Winehouse's hair could save her? We were told to imagine Amy Winehouse falling and her hair finally falls off and goes solo. Then there is Gordon Ramsey, who swears wherever he goes. After his recent announcement about only using English fruit and veg we thought he might do the same with swearing - English swear words only. Another thing we had to imagine was Lewis Hamilton racing on a lawnmower!

• John showed us this article he wrote about the Queen. It was supposed to be about teenagers respecting Her Majesty but he twisted the story so that the Queen was joining their gangs in the streets of London.
  
  He then gave us the chance to change an article that he had twisted around to make it into a radio show. It was about a werewolf attacking someone with some silly comments from police officers.
  
  We searched some articles just before he arrived and we told him about the baggage going missing at Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. So we then came up with the ideas that we would call it something like the Bermuda Triangle or Lost?
  
  Thinking of all the ideas we had come up with, the Terminal 5 article won to be published on John's newsbiscuit website. It would be Lost, Series 5 where flight 732 got stuck at the airport and viewers would tune in to see if their suitcases had been found yet and they could escape the airport!

• After showing us how his imagination worked, he told us how he got into writing books. His ambition as a child had always been to be a writer. He got good at his writing as he read different types of books. He first started by writing comedy columns in the school magazines. Then he also got the same position in his university magazine. He got a degree in English and then worked on a building site!
  
  He had then started to write sketches of his work and one day, he sent it to Radio 4. As he was at home one day listening to the radio, he heard his sketch being read out with his name.
  
  He continuously sent in his sketches and they were being used on the radio. The people from the radio then called him in for an interview and he got 3 minutes to work on a radio show each week.  

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