THERE'S nothing funny about try to get a humorous book published but Bob Rogers has cracked the code. Mike Buckingham spoke to him about his latest romp.

BOB Rogers knows the messy and noisy newsroom of the Newvale Chronicle and its printing presses redolent of ink and oil very well.

Twenty years ago back in the days of typewriters and linotype printing he was a writer for the South Wales Argus.

"Not that I want people to think it's the Argus I'm writing about" he says.

"In fact I don't really want people to identify my book particularly with South Wales.

"That said I'm from Pontypool and I know the way local people think and the sort of humour they appreciate."

'As dawn breaks there is little to mark this new day as being markedly different from its immediate predecessor.

'The small town of Newvale yawns, throws its legs from under the duvet and sits absently scratching itself for five minutes while it waits for the last remnants of a half-remembered dream to melt away.'

So opens Small Town People by Bob Rogers, a 290 - page romp through a town which at various points bears a resemblance to Newport, or perhaps Pontypool, or perhaps Dylan Thomas's Llareggub or then again anywhere you want it to be.

“Starting in a newspaper office is a good place because such places often encapsulate the feel of a town” Rogers, who has since burgeoned into the worlds of television and film, says.

“Through them you find out what concerns people and they're funny places in themselves.

“As many odd and hilarious things happen inside a newspaper office as outside.”

Certainly within the time frame of this book which hovers in some uncertain period between the 1950s and 1980s that was indeed the case.

Although from our neck of the woods Bob Rogers went to school in Stratford-upon-Avon.

“The same school as William Shakespeare although of course not at the same time.

“I learned to say ‘I'm sorry I'm late for class’ in Latin and ‘I fell in the river’ and that's about it so far as Stratford's concerned.”

He is also the great-great-grandson of the famous Gwent herbalist Granny Marsh, a connection which verges on the occult and might go some way to explaining minor eccentricities.

Now 58, Bob Rogers has cut free from the grind of daily newspaper production for the less certain waters of freelance writing.

Specialising in humour he has written several comedy pieces for the BBC including Kerr In The Community and and Looks Like Rain.

His current project is about Dick Shakespeare the writer with the famous brother.

"And I've finished A Town Like Arthur which is about a small town in South Wales which realises that it can capitalise on a connection with King Arthur it doesn't actually have.

"It started as a book but has ended up as a film script."

As deadlines for one project are met so another looms.

“I might be writing solidly for a couple of weeks and then have to break off to do something else.

“I might do very little for a few days before going back at it full pelt and then the whole cycle renews itself”, Rogers says.

In the world of the professional writer there is no room for so-called writers' block.

“If you don't write you don't eat.

“You might think you're in the mood for funny writing and it all comes out wrong.

“At other times you can feel not at all like writing and yet what you produce at the end of the day is spot-on.

“You're approach has to be professional. You can rarely afford an 'I don't want to do it' day.”

The cheeky (sometimes downright rude) look at the life of the people of Newvale is, given Rogers' increasing profile, bound to find a market.

"In fact I've already sold over 5,000.

“You can download it, but for me there's nothing like an actual book which you can hold and that's how I expect it to sell.”

He does not, he adds, expect the book to make him wildly rich.

“No villas in Barbados.

“But I might make enough for a holiday for the family and get the car through its MoT.”

*Small Town People by Bob Rogers is published by Cathdu Publishers at £8.99 www.cathdu.com, Amazon, Waterstone's and W H Smith.