Fungus the Bogeyman

Product Information

Briggs says that he invented Fungus, ‘to show the petty nastiness of life — slime and spit and dandruff, all this awful stuff which is slightly funny because it detracts from human dignity and our pretensions.

Briggs' character Fungus the Bogeyman, first featured in his children's work of the same name, published in 1977. Life in Bogeydom is full of snot, smells, slime, scum and other unspeakable things, and Bogeymen live under the ground revelling in all the nastiness imaginable.

Making things go bump in the night can be satisfying in its way, and a pint of slime goes down nicely after work. This book was turned into a two-handed radio play with Peter Sallis in the male lead role, and subsequently an animated film, featuring John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft.

It follows one day in the life of the title character, a working class Bogeyman with the mundane job of scaring human beings. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on a pop-up opening door on the verso of the front panel in the year of publication, "For Eileen Ireland With Best Wishes from Raymond Briggs 29 September 1982. The story, such as it is, follows a day in the life of the eponymous Fungus, a hard-working Bogeyman who is going through an existential midlife crisis, questioning both his purpose and the system in which he works. I have had this book for years – but it is now time to pass it on to a little boy, who will hopefully love it as much as I do. Bogeydom is not a place I would particularly like to visit, but I am glad I am aware of it, and that while reading about its goings-on my dinner, and sense of humour, remained intact.Skip forward [mumble mumble] years -- yes, that many -- and I've just found the very same book hiding in a forgotten, dusty stack at my parent's house. I debated giving it five stars, but there are one or two Briggs books I like even better ( The Snowman and When the Wind Blows, if you were wondering, and even if you weren't), so I held off, no doubt being unforgivably parsimonious with my stars. The book is set out into panels and large blocks of text, with Briggs' signature style of illustration. When the Wind Blows (1982) confronted the trusting, optimistic Bloggs couple with the horror of nuclear war, and was praised in the British House of Commons for its timeliness and originality. Fungus the Bogeyman is a lovingly created work of art, with as much care and thought in the words as in the images.