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Me at the 500 Words event, telling the queen how I grew up reading comics ‘cause we had no books in the house. Hopefully this will inspire every kid to know they have a chance of doing all right, if they can get hold of a public library card and access reading that way – they can go far. Camilla pushed for the competition to run this year which is great as the rules are, there are no rules apart from stretching the imagination – v. cool.

And I can’t tell you how excited I was to illustrate Spencer’s winning story in the 8-11 silver category, ‘The Scottish Gangsta’ – it was right up my street! Straight away I knew his madcap heist had to be comic strip style, and to make it special I drew it with ink on paper so he could have an original to take home. Spencer was chuffed with it, so that made my day. (Also, he is my new hero).

Well done to the finalists and every 44,000 kids who entered! You can read all the winning stories in full on the BBC Teach website.