Carlo CollodiPinocchio Pinocchio was the creation of Carlo Collodi. This was hispen name; his real name was Carlo Lorenzini. Collodi is the name of the littlevillage in Northern Tuscany where his mother was born and it is now foreverlinked with the name of Pinocchio. Carol Collodi was born in 1826 and died in 1890. He was asoldier before he became a journalist and then he turned to writing forchildren. His adventures of Pinocchio were first serialized in a newspaper andthen published with great success in 1883. As everyone knows, Pinocchio is a wooden puppet that, to thesurprise of his maker, the wood-carver Gepetto, comes to life and proceeds tohave the most astonishing adventures. He is a naughty, mischievous puppet whois full of good intentions but wants everything, and lets nothing stand in hisway. He knows that Gepetto loves him like a son, and is aware that he ishurting him, but he just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. There are always somany temptations, such as the invitation from the cat and the fox (with voices,in this recording, inspired by Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson) to make hisfive gold coins into five hundred times as much by burying them in the “fieldof miracles”; or the temptation from his friend, Lampwick, to go to live inPlayland where nobody does any work at all and you can just play all day. However, Pinocchio has a conscience and is always vowingthat he will turn over a new leaf. Anyway, he desperately wants to become a boyand he knows that this will never happen until he can learn to be morethoughtful and not keep running off or telling lies even to himself. Famously,when he does tell a lie, Pinocchio’s nose grows longer and longer. So much so,that a one point in the story the Blue Fairy has to get a thousand woodpeckersto peck it down to its right size again. Eventually Pinocchio comes through his gripping adventures;adventures which lead him to all kinds of places — a cave where he nearly getsfried alive; the circus; Busy Bee Island and even the inside of a shark, toname but a few. On his way he meets many curious characters, some good and somebad. But above all he discovers, in the Blue Fairy, a mother, and he learns tovalue Gepetto as a father. He is rewarded by being made into the “real boy” healways wanted to be. Like all fairy tales the story is dark and scary as well asbeing exuberantly positive and of course, everything comes right in the end andeverybody lives “happily ever after.” Notes by Jan Fielden John Sessions John Sessions, the highly versatile actor and comedian, iswell known for his comic work in films such as My Night with Reg, In the BleakMidwinter and The Pope Must Die, and the television shows Whose Line is itAnyway?, The New Statesman, and Spitting Image.