05 April 2024 , 18:27
908
0
Greg James has issued an apology after sparking a furious backlash over plans to update Roald Dahl’s book The Twits - and after sparking a ableism storm.
The 38-year-old radio star and his side-kick Chris Smith have teamed up with Puffin books - along with 13 other authors - to reimagine a number of iconic writer Dahl’s classic children’s novels. But the pair sparked furore when they discussed re-designing the characters.
The pair worked with illustrator Emily Jones to update the characters - where they suggested giving one of them a glass eye to make them "more disgusting". Admiring Emily's work, Chris said: "So nearly there! She needs to be more revolting," - and this encouraged Greg to remark: "Really gross." Emily then suggested: "What about a glass eye?" to which Chris exclaimed: "She needs a glass eye, that’s it! What a disgusting pair of Twits."
The exchange provoked an avalanche of complaints from fans - who slammed the radio stars as "depressing" and accused them of ableism. This despite the fact Dahl's original books and illustrations had Mrs Twit wearing a glass eye which she sometimes removed in order to play pranks on her husband.
Roald Dahl's iconic children's novels are being reimagined by 14 present day writing teams (PA Media)
Greg, along with Chris Smith and illustrator Emily Jones, are reimagining The Twits (@PuffinBooks/X)But with the backlash over the renewed story and Greg and Chris's video, the duo have issued a grovelling apology - and the offending video in question has been removed. In an online apology, Greg wrote: "We are so sorry to have caused offence with the launch video... It was absolutely not our intention. And we apologise unreservedly. It’s now gone."
Anderson explains how close he came to quitting cricket after Caribbean snub
He continued: "We understand that words matter and we pride ourselves on championing and welcoming everyone into the magical world of children’s books. We would never dream of deliberately setting out to exclude anyone. With the glass eye comment, we were attempting to pay homage to one of the Twit’s most famous pranks involving a glass of beer in order to remind people of Dahl’s infamous terrible two. It’s in no way a suggestion that this forms any part of the plot of the new story nor was it our intention to suggest that it was in any way disgusting."
The lengthy post continued: "It’s unfortunate that the word disgusting appears to be a direct comment on that. That’s an error on our part. We are devastated that it’s come across like this but completely understand why there is anger. And we appreciate everyone rightly calling it out. We hear that fully, we’re so upset that we made a mistake but we’re still incredibly proud of this book and we’re excited to get out there and share it with young readers all over the world."
However, the apology was largely slammed by the radio star's followers - with many reacting to the message on X to complain the original video and his subsequent apology suggested there was a lack of awareness and diversity over the scandal. One wrote in reply: "If none of your team even questioned that, perhaps you need a more diverse team." And a further fan wrote: "If it was all wholly unintentional (which it probably was) then you have the wrong people on the project and at the table. When something is so obvious to a discriminated against minority and nobody noticed until it was posted, it could easily happen again."