Ian Ogilvy
About Author
Ian is best known as an actor in particular for his take-over of the role of The Saint from Roger Moore. He has appeared in countless television productions, both here and in the United States, has made a number of films and starred often on the West End stage.
Ian was born in Woking, Surrey, in 1943. His father was an advertising executive, his mother an ex-actress. His father had been an actor once as well, but had given it up when he discovered that he hated actors and poverty equally. Ian went to school in Sunningdale and then later to Eton. At 17, he got a job as a stagehand at the Royal Court Theatre in London. According to Ian, he was the worst stagehand they ever had and after about 6 months of this they were very relieved when he got a place at RADA. Two years later, Ian started his career as an actor.
Ian has two grown up children by a previous marriage Emma and Titus - and two grandchildren (so far) called Barnaby and Matilda. Ian now lives in Southern California with his wife Kitty and two stepsons, Sam and Lee. They also have three dogs and a cat. When he isn't writing or acting he fills his time by building things out of wood, gardening, playing games on his computer, riding his big black motorbike and scuba diving. A long time ago, he learnt to fly and has even parachuted out of a plane, though not one he was flying at the time!
First writing attempts
Ian wrote and illustrated his first book when he was about six and it was called Cheepy The Chick. It was very short and about a chicken. It was very scary and involved a villainous fox. It was never published but Ian still has it today. He began to write seriously at the suggestion of his Literary Agent.
Ian's Measle books have been enormously successful around the world and will shortly be made into a movie by Robert Zemekis.
Interview
Ian on Measle and the Wrathmonk
The original idea for Measle and The Wrathmonk came from an incident many years ago, when Ian visited a film director's house in London: 'Apart from making very good films, this director was also a serious model train hobbyist. He had built an extraordinary train set in one of his spare rooms. The tracks were laid on shelves that ran around the walls of the room and the scenery was built up almost to the ceiling. The train set bore very close inspection - if you looked really carefully, you might spot along the tracks the tiny figure of an old fashioned, black-skirted, bonneted nursemaid, pushing a Victorian perambulator towards a sharp bend in the path. On the other side of the bend - and out of her view - sat a Bengal tiger (There's a Bengal tiger - or at least a model of one - in Measle and The Wrathmonk).
The whole layout was like this and the trains themselves took a secondary place in the scheme of things. There was a boundless imagination - and a distinctly quirky humour - about the set up and it set me thinking about the idea of a live boy being placed somehow in a miniature world of somebody else's imagination.'
Ian on Measle and the Dragodon
When Ian was a child, living in London, one of his favourite places to go on a summer day was to Battersea Park. 'There used to be a funfair there. It was set up each Spring and dismantled each Autumn and, during the summer months, it would be in full swing. It was a rather dilapidated affair the paint was peeling off the Dodgem cars, the iron of Ferris wheel was decidedly rusty and some of the woodwork on the roller coaster actually appeared to be rotting away but it was still a wonderful place for a kid to visit. And, if your imagination was fertile enough, the funfair could also seem a slightly sinister spot, particularly after dark. And in the rain. And when nobody was there.'
So, since all kids like theme parks the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned funfair Ian thought he'd set Measle And The Dragodon in a cold, deserted, dark and rainy theme park, where anything can happen - and often does
