BAGLAN: Rob Brydon’s cat Crumble becomes the star of the comedian’s first children’s book

One of Baglan‘s most famous sons has written his first book for children, and the star of it is not him: it is his ginger cat, Crumble.

Rob Brydon announced The Cat In The Cupboard, out today, in a video with Crumble held in his arms, and addressed the news directly to the cat.

“Well today is the day,” he said. “Crumble, your book, The Cat In The Cupboard is out today. It’s all about an adventure you had.

“It’s out today, you can get it everywhere basically, in all the usual places.”

The comedian said he hoped the book would spark something shared between children and the grown-ups doing the voices: “I’m really hoping that The Cat In The Cupboard fires the imagination of both young readers and the adults reading to them, creating opportunities for shared moments of reading pleasure.”

The book is published by Puffin, Penguin’s children’s imprint, and illustrated by Ellie Snowdon, a children’s book illustrator living in south Wales whose work has twice been highly commended for the Macmillan Prize.

Written in playful rhyme for readers aged five to seven, it sends Crumble on a rescue mission into the garden of his arch-nemesis to recover a beloved lost toy, according to the publisher.

Readers are not hanging about: by Wednesday afternoon the book was already number one in Amazon’s charts for children’s books about cats and stories in verse, and sat at number 11 across all books.

It is the first time the 61-year-old has written for children, following his 2011 memoir Small Man In A Book.

Children’s storytelling is hardly new territory, though. Brydon’s voice has run through the screen adaptations of Julia Donaldson’s books, Stick Man, Zog, Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo’s Child among them, making him part of the furniture of British bedtimes for years. Writing the story himself is the new bit.

The Baglan boy was born and raised in the village, part of the creative pedigree of the town they call Little Hollywood, alongside Richard Burton, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen, that anchors Port Talbot’s tilt at UK Town of Culture.

At Porthcawl Comprehensive, one of his schoolmates was Ruth Jones, with whom he would much later share the screen in Gavin and Stacey, she as Nessa, he as Uncle Bryn.

His earlier school, Dumbarton House in Swansea, was the scene of a crime he confessed decades later on Would I Lie To You?: stealing Catherine Zeta-Jones’s lunch money.

Uncle Bryn carried him from 2007 to the show’s farewell in 2024, alongside two decades hosting Would I Lie To You?, The Trip with Steve Coogan, and a turn in Barbie. He was made an MBE in 2013.

His other allegiance has never moved: a lifelong Swansea City fan, he is an ambassador for the club’s 1912 Foundation.

Crumble’s own review of the book has not yet been published.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.