Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Rosie Dixon series by Christopher Wood


Christopher Wood was a very prolific author who wrote a series of sex comedy books in the early to late seventies under various pen names of Timothy Lea, Rosie Dixon, Penny Sutton and Oliver Grape.

The Rosie Dixon series he penned for Futura Books was a spin-off from the Timothy Lea series, and ran for eight books. The series was popular enough for Columbia Pictures to make a film, as they had done very succesfully with the Timothy Lea books, based on Confessions of a Night Nurse but renamed Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse (Dir: Justin Cartwright 1977).


Unfortunately for Columbia they didn't have as much success as they did with the Timothy Lea films and Rosie Dixon only had the one cinematic outing. The film was badly miscast with Debbie Ash in the lead role, but, as with a lot of British sex comedies, it did have a great support/guest star cast. Director Justin Cartwright, however, seemed more interested in making sure the photography was of the highest order - which it was thanks to Alex Thomson - than making a funny film and he doesn't appear to have made another film since.

The books were printed on cheap paper and each featured a photo of Rosie representing the particular career she was pursing in each adventure. The model on the cover representing Rosie seemed to be the same one through out the run of the series. The stories were relatively funny - with Package Tour and Lady Courier being my favourites. All books were written from the first person perspective.

The last book in the series was Rosie Dixon - Barmaid which, like the movie, dropped the Confession moniker and was published in 1977.

2 comments:

  1. Hi... Sidney? :-)

    We seem to share the fascination for Wood's series. I have them all: The complete Timmy Lea and almost complete Rosie. I missed 'Barmaid' earliers and now search the Web weekly for it. It surfaces now and then, but the price...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, yes I love all the Christopher Wood penned books from the seventies. I think his ability as a writer has been overlooked due to the type of books he was penning. I guess he did have a degree of critical success with his involvement with the Bond franchise. Have you tracked down a copy of Barmaid? I'm planning on updating the blog over the next month or so.

    ReplyDelete