Writer Sue Townsend on losing her sight

When the actor Stephen Mangan first met author Sue Townsend in his audition for the BBC series Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, he found it bizarre, though said nothing, when she insisted on scrutinising his features through a huge magnifying glass for what seemed like ages. "He presumed this was mad writer behaviour," laughs Townsend. "He was very well brought up and polite. So he got the part!"

What Mangan didn't realise was that Townsend was registered blind, having lost most of her sight through diabetic retinopathy. "I cope in an English way by not acknowledging it properly," says Townsend. "There's this expectation that you deal with it by being some kind of super hero, rather than fully accepting how disabling and absolutely awful it is."

Townsend believes there should be some kind of practical retraining programme "instantly" to help people when first diagnosed. In her case, she says she received "a horrible, nasty card, by second-class post, in a cheap brown envelope telling me I was now registered blind. It symbolises your life is going to be crap," she says. "There should be an intensive course immediately to find out what's out there to help."

In Adrian Mole: Weapons of Mass Destruction, Adrian's friend, Nigel, is blind. "Adrian does all the typical blundering stuff," says Townsend. "Like dragging blind people around by their clothing, and treating them as invalids, instead of asking them how best to hold on to you."

She continues to write either by dictating, or using a voice activating machine, though her output has decreased. "The damn voice machine is not good with an East Midlands' accent," she smiles. "The word 'God' keeps coming out as 'dog.'"