From childhood, siblings David Hardie and Diana Townsend loved telling stories.
While still at school, despite being dyslexic, David won a competition to have a play he had written produced by the BBC.
As teenagers, David and Diana helped their father build an animated model of a three-ring circus which was exhibited around the UK. Later, the family bought a derelict school which they transformed into a tourist attraction.
Diana has written a series of memoirs about these years under the title Me, My Family and the Poltergeist.
When the tourist attraction closed, the family started a new business creating Christmas displays for shopping centres as well as hand-sculpting thousands of figures for model villages across the UK.
In more recent years, David and Diana, together with Diana’s husband, Robert Townsend, have produced a number of short films and two feature films.
While David’s children were young, he told them stories of the Dittos, invisible elf-like creatures who live in the seaside town of Dawlish, helping to look after wildlife and clean up after visitors.
Working with Diana, David has now developed these stories into a trilogy of books under the title The Dittos of Dawlish.
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