HAVE an Easter holiday treat with gran – Pirate Gran! For all those who haven’t read Geraldine Durrant’s popular books, Pirate Gran does all the things a normal grandmother does, except she’s also a pirate with a crocodile under her bed and a raft of seagoing adventures to talk about.

Geraldine was commissioned to write the first Pirate Gran book after a shorter version of the story won a BBC competition.

She says: “You never expect life to change while you are watching paint dry, but that’s what happened to me.

“One minute I was trying to decide if the living room wall really needed another coat of magnolia and the next Pirate Gran had bounded into my brain, and refused to leave until I had written her down. I thought Eureka moments happened to other people. But there was Pirate Gran – as large as life and twice as naughty – demanding to be let loose on the world. She was irresistibly funny and feisty, and what’s more she very thoughtfully brought her story with her.”

After Gran’s first adventure won the BBC competition to encourage parents to read with their children, the National Maritime Museum asked her to write a longer version of her story for publication.

Geraldine says: “I had been to school in Greenwich, so I knew the museum very well and over the past six years I have loved being able to support the great work it does in preserving our maritime heritage.”

Illustrated by Rose Forshall, the latest book Pirate Gran and the Monsters was chosen as one of the books featured in the 2013 UK Libraries Summer Reading Scheme.

Now, thanks to Scamp Theatre company, which specialise in adapting children’s literature for the stage, a musical version of her adventures, Pirate Gran on stage, is touring the country and stopping off at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre on Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12.