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Once upon a time, two 11-year-old boys sat at the back of a maths class in Reigate and became instant friends. Over the years that friendship blossomed into a creative partnership that has brought us the hugely popular family-friendly musical audiobook, Rockford’s Rock Opera. Set in Battersea, and having been downloaded over 2 million times, the narrative is about to take to the page in the form of a new illustrated book: Lost on Infinity. 

Writer, comedian and actor, Steve Punt, best known for The Mary Whitehouse Experience and BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show, and musician and writer Matthew Sweetapple, have spent the last 15 years creating this popular audiobook series, along with Matthew’s wife, Elaine Sweetapple, a graphic designer and artist.

When I sit down to chat with them, I can’t help but notice the way they bounce off one another. “We obviously know each other very well,” Matthew says. “But we loosely divided [the audiobook] up in that Steve did the words, I did the music and the recording, and Elaine did the design and all the characters, so it fitted rather well together.”

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A Battersea background

Lost on Infinity follows a boy from Battersea, Moog, and his dog, Rockford, when they find themselves on the ‘Island of Infinity’: home to the last animal of an extinct species. The story originated in a Christmas song Matthew wrote for his niece about her toy dog, so when Battersea Dogs and Cats Home reached out to the Sweetapple’s advertising business to create a Christmas song for them, they already had something perfect to work with. Rockford became a rescue dog, and the song reached number 42 in the charts.

Once Boxing Day hit, Matthew and Elaine realised they didn’t want Rockford’s story to end there. Inspired by Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, they wanted to create an immersive musical audiobook that would not only appeal to children, but also their family, so enlisted Steve to help build the narrative. They decided to keep the Battersea setting, as it hadn’t been touched upon in much children’s literature and Matthew also had a personal connection.

“I used to live in Battersea,” Matthew tells me. “So I knew how lovely it was and I think we all found Battersea quite magical, especially when the power station was derelict. It was very moody.”

Battersea Power Station was the only element the trio had to change from the original story, now that it’s been transformed into a popular tourist spot. “I like it just as much with a Starbucks in it!” Steve admits.

From audio to the page

The decision to bring the audiobook to the page was from a demand of fans. When the audiobook was first released, CDs were the norm, acting as perfect gifts for children, but once the world shifted more heavily online, a digital download didn’t have the same appeal. The new illustrated book brings the story back into a physical form, and includes links to the music and audiobook to keep that immersive quality.

“I think with some children, who maybe have dyslexia or something like that, reading in a classroom or just reading in general can be slightly daunting,” Elaine says. “So having the audio being read to you with actors, sound effects, everything, and you just follow the words, it’s a nice way to enjoy a book and it can encourage reading.”

She adds: “It’s not a book that you read and you put on the shelf. It comes out time and time again, and grandparents like it because it’s something to share with grandchildren together. No screens, just them together.”

Elaine came up with the original character designs and, over the past few years, she’s been working on the illustrations for the book, featuring both real extinct creatures and made-up characters.

“We didn’t really want it to look like a children’s book illustration,” Matthew adds. “We wanted it to be a bit more real. A bit more graphic novel. I think that’s what comes across because we didn’t want the creatures to feel like they were cartoons, we wanted them to feel like they were potentially real.”

Bringing hope to an uncertain future

The backdrop to the story is the issue of extinction. The trio never wanted the environmental message to dominate the narrative, but a study from Save the Children found that 75% of young people globally find the future of the planet frightening, and Steve shared that he had noticed it in his own children.

“They’re far more concerned about it than most adults are, I guess because they’re too busy earning a living, but children are really conscious of it,” he says. “I think Lost in Infinity addresses that without preaching. It’s just a hopeful story that points out that we’re not powerless. We can change things.”

They introduced the concept of biomimicry into the story to help instil hope in children, which is a real-world practice looking for solutions in nature – something none of them had heard of prior to writing the story. It’s clear from speaking with them that every step of the narrative is thought about extensively.

“We did it because we absolutely loved doing it,” Matthew says.