How Robert Popper created a 104-year-old to mess with people

Twenty years after the release of his Timewaster Letters, Friday Night Dinner creator Robert Popper has returned with a new book of genuine correspondence from a fictional creation – 104-year-old Elsie Drake, the sixth oldest woman in Britain.

Her letters to the likes of the Prime Minister, Greggs bakeries and the Victoria & Albert Museum – and their responses – have now been collected in a new book, The Elsie Drake Letters.

Last week, we reported how the stunt got Popper into trouble with the authorities.

And here were reproduce two of the exchanges – entirely real, though for anonymity purposes some private details have been removed and all signatures deleted.

With Wimpy

With Puzzler magazine

Popper will be talking more about the book in a session with Cariad Lloyd at the Southbank Centre in London on November 10. And ahead of the gig he put in a prank call to the venue, in the guise of Elsie:

Tickets for the event are available here.

Popper was co-creator of the mock BBC documentary Look Around You with Peter Serafinowicz, was the producer for the third and fourth series of Channel 4's Peep Show and script editor on The Inbetweeners and The IT Crowd.

The Elsie Drake Letters are available from Amazon, priced £14.19 in hardback or £9.99 on Kindle – or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.

Published: 4 Nov 2024