Censorship, like the changes to Roald Dahl’s work, is going to leave us with a world full of boring books - Sarah Todd

So, revelations this week that hundreds of changes have been made to the descriptions of the characters in Roald Dahl’s famous children’s books explain a lot. This frustrated gift giver hasn’t got a failing sense of humour, the books that are left on the shelf will have been written with an eye on jumping through modern-day politically correct publishing hoops. It’s not a weird personality trait that means nothing no longer appeals. These books look boring because they are.

The Famous Five, Malory Towers, Tracy Beaker and Harry Potter of my children’s bedtime reading all feature strong characters. They have been re-read countless times and their owners would play pop if they realised they were slowly being syphoned off because of the woeful lack of any alternatives to give to the next generation of readers.

But back to Roald Dahl. Publisher Puffin Books has been accused of censorship after it removed ‘colourful language’ and passages relating to subjects such as weight, mental health, gender and race.

Take Augustus Gloop, the first child to find a golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New editions of the book no longer refer to him as fat. It won’t be a popular thought, but perhaps this writer’s generation weighed less because somebody in the playground would have called them fat? Probably even a teacher would have mentioned it.

Bullying is wrong, but brushing physical differences under the carpet erases the colour from our world. Same with the publishing industry’s blurring of men and women into gender-neutral ‘people’.

Thinking aloud, would the late Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends be commissioned today? The series, which focused on the lives of different members of a Leeds slimming club, is still fondly remembered. Yes, it set James Corden on the road to superstardom, but more importantly it gave a voice to overweight people. They weren’t airbrushed out of the way.

We are becoming a world of the bland leading the bland. We can all remember Boris Johnson because, if we were describing him in a pre-censorship children’s book, he has ‘scruffy blonde hair and ill-fitting suits that made him look like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.’

He also often said what he actually thought and always appeared to be happy to share a smile and a joke with anyone, from whatever walk of life. Attractive women caught his eye. Now personality is no reason to elect somebody as Prime Minister, but we’re motoring (in a boring electric car way) towards a world of zero distinguishable characteristics.

The most interesting thing about opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer is that it’s not just this voter who finds him yawn-inducing. A poll last year found over half gave a negative response, with the word ‘boring’ most often associated with him.

Going back to the copies of Famous Five gathering dust upstairs. George was this correspondent’s favourite character.

A short-haired tomboy followed around by her dog Timothy and having the most fantastic adventures on Kirrin Island with her cousins. Perhaps she was too busy stopping smugglers and swigging ginger beer, but there was never a chapter where she booked in for gender therapy. She didn’t like dolls and pretty dresses like cousin Anne, but it wasn’t a big deal. The girls’ differences made them a great team.

Having personally spent much of the 1970s in dungarees, or bib-and-brace as we called them, being a ‘tomboy’ the current cloud of confusion around gender our world seems to be under at the moment has brought reflections.

Yes, it must be terrible for those who feel they are genuinely trapped in the wrong bodies, but is pandering after the feelings of a minority preventing the vast majority of youngsters from reading stories that are full of witty observations and that thing (some will need reminding of it) called fun?