The plot was completely different; there were 10 children, not five, all of them with names like Herpes Trout, and each child was more disgusting than the last, characterised by some terrible human flaw that would lead to their downfall. The first draft involved a burglary at Wonka's house, which Charlie foiled and was thus granted a lifetime's supply of chocolate. The other drafts get closer and closer to the published version. Why, I wondered, had he never told us about Herpes Trout, or Elvira Entwistle? They were cast-offs, thrown away, not even worth mentioning during supper, but for me it was like discovering lost siblings.
Want to say something? Do so here.
Note to spammers: This comment system applies the rel=nofollow attribute to the poster's URL and all links. Posting links to this page will not improve their search engine rankings.
Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.
Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.