Johnny and the Bomb

Did You Know?

• In the TV series, Johnny's grandmother is killed, meaning he no longer exists, but she is saved due to an alarm going off.
• Bigmac is locked up in the Tower of London as a Nazi spy in one timeline.
• Yo-less said it was racial stereotyping to say all black kids acted like that.

Plot summary

Johnny Maxwell, a young teen, discovers that a bag lady named Mrs Tachyon has a trolley that is actually a time machine. He travels with his friends Wobbler, Bigmac, Kirsty, and Yo-less to Blackbury during the Blitz. Wobbler is left behind in 1941, and when they return for him, Johnny attempts to prevent the deaths caused by the raid.

Characters

Johnny Maxwell is the protagonist. Stephen 'Wobbler' Johnson, Johnny's best friend, is overweight and skilled at computer piracy; he believes Johnny is 'mental'. In the novel, Wobbler gets stuck in 1941 and later becomes a billionaire called Sir John, though the multiple timelines make this uncertain. Simon 'Bigmac' Wrigley is an asthmatic skinhead embarrassed by his interest in maths, living with his brother in a tower block. Yo-less is a 'technically' black boy nicknamed for not saying 'Yo!'; his interests include Star Trek, train spotting, Morris dancing, and brass band music. Kirsty is the highly organized girl of the group, intelligent but with poor people skills, who tries to organize Johnny's life without realizing he does not want it organized.

Television series

In January 2006 the BBC aired a three-part television adaptation starring George MacKay, Zoë Wanamaker, Frank Finlay, and Keith Barron. In the series, the original history has no deaths in the Paradise Street bombing, which the gang inadvertently changes on their first visit. Stephen is renamed Walter, later Sir Walter.