For the 25th November 2005 edition of BBC Radio's "World Writing", Eoin Colfer was interviewed by a group of schoolchildren. It also included some extracts from the books. Copies of the programme were available from the BBC website for the following seven days. A transcript is below.

You've written lots of children's books but you're best known in Britain for your books about Artemis Fowl. Can you tell us something about the main character and the plot of your book?
Well, Artemis Fowl is a 12-year-old criminal mastermind from Ireland, who has devised a very cunning scheme to relieve the fairy people of some of their gold. Once Artemis has got hold of the fairy Book, which is their Bible, he finds that he needs a fairy to help him get some fairy gold. So he kidnaps a Captain in the Lower Elements Police, Captain Holly Short, and he uses her to get him closer to the gold. And this is the beginning of several adventures that they have together.

In Artemis Fowl you bring together the two very different worlds of the humans and the fairies. Has your Irish background got something to do with the way you include elves, leprechauns and trolls in the stories?
Definitely. In Ireland, fairy tales, tales of mythology and legends are very, very important to our culture. It was always my favourite time of the day, both as a student and a teacher, when the fairy book came out. And so for a long time I've been meaning to do a fairy book myself. But I thought there was no point in trying to do a rehash of the old stories so I tried to invent a completely new race of fairies.

Are there any other things to do with growing up in Ireland which have influenced what you write and how you write?

Definitely. I've written other books besides Artemis Fowl. One of the books, which was called Benny and Babe, is completely based on my own youth in the small seaside town of Slade in Ireland, and I included every single landmark in my books - from the castles to the rocks to the lighthouse. And there's an old manor house nearby called Loftus Hall and that's what I used as Fowl Manor, where Artemis Fowl lives. And as for the people, I suppose the people closest to me are my own family, and I've used all my family in my books - and my brothers especially. I've used them as goblins in the second Artemis Fowl book, and they were very mean to me as a child so I killed them off in the second book as revenge. [fake evil laughter] But they don't mind, they understand it's just a joke.

Do you believe that fairy folk really exist and there is such a thing as magic?
Well, the first thing I do when I go into any reading is I look around at the couple of hundred children and I see if there are any of them who have their ears hidden - because I'm convinced that if I can't see the ears then they're pointy ears, and that the fairy people have sent a spy. But seriously, I don't know if I believe in the fairies, but I definitely believe in the unxplained and UFOs and all that kind of thing. And I would be really, really happy if a leprechaun popped up out of the ground right now for a chat. But I'm still waiting.

I noticed in the blurb of one of your books that your parents urged you to write when you were young. How has this affected you?
Well, I think it makes life much easier for you if you have two parents, or one parent, or a guardian, standing over your shoulder saying, "Go on, you can do it!" And that's what I owe my parents, because when you're a young person, you really need encouragement. If it wasn't for them, I'm firmly convinced that I would never have even attempted writing a book.

When you were small, who was your favourite author?
I had a few favourite authors. One of them would definitely have been Mark Twain - I loved The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, because you could imagine yourself as Tom Sawyer, he wasn't a perfect boy. And I think he was one of the first anti-heros, and of course my character Artemis is also an anti-hero so I owe a lot to Mark Twain. Another favourite of mine would have been C. S. Lewis. I really loved all the Narnia books. And also J. R. R. Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings books were fantastic also.

Your books seem to have a lot of death in them, like when Butler first faced the troll he's fatally wounded but he's saved by Holly's magic. Do you have to have this kind of thing for an adventure novel?
I'd like to have as many twists as I can. It is kind of a classic twist to let one of your characters almost die and then save them, but if you're writing a book about a genius it has to be surprising because he has to think of stuff that nobody else can think of. And unfortunately, I'm not a genius so these things don't come quickly, so you have to sit down and think, "What ingenious thing can Artemis do here that nobody will have thought of?"

Can fairies and humans get married, and will Artemis and Holly fall in love?
Oh, you old romantic, you! Yes, they can. It's a good question because thousands and thousands of years ago - and not many people know this - fairies and humans shared the surface of the world, and they did get married and they would have little half-human, half-fairy babies. And that is why many of us now have little touches of magic. Sometimes we know what's going to happen before it happens. Some of us have physical characteristics: some of us can touch our nose with our tongues. You might have a long tongue now if your great-great-great-great-grandmother was actually a little scaly green goblin. I bet you're sorry you asked now, aren't you? Sorry about that.

We don't usually think of fairies carrying guns and using the latest technology. You've brought the world of fairies up to date. What made you think of putting the two together?
Well, when I began to write Artemis Fowl there was no technology and it was very much a traditional fairy story. But as I continued to write it, for me there was something missing, there was a missing ingredient, something to make this book a little bit different from the other fairy books on the market. And I realised that was technology. I was the computer teacher in the school and every single one of the kids loved those computers. And so that was the extra ingredient that I added in.

What is your favourite: elves, leprechauns or trolls?
Elves, leprechauns or trolls? I would have to say trolls, because they are big mean horrible and dangerous, and they're involved in all the most exciting parts of the stories.

Do your Artemis Fowl stories deal with things you feel are important and if so, what are they?
I think they do, even though they are on one level straight-forward adventure stories. One of the things that I include is family, because to me that is very important. At the beginning of the first book, Artemis thinks gold is the only important thing in the world. But by the end of the first book he has realised that his parents are really much more important to him than any gold. I'm also very interested in the environment and so each book has a little environmental message. I try to get that across in the fairies' point of view. To them, we don't look very nice. And so, in the first book for example, we talk about pollution of the sea and how the dolphins are all made ill.

How many books have you written and what's your favourite?
Eleven now, at the moment. My favourite is always the one that I'm working on. And at the moment I'm working on a picture book because every night when I bring my son to bed he asks me to read Artemis, or make up an Artemis story, so I've always kind of wished I had a book for him so I'm working on a picture book now called The Legend of Spud Murphy, which is about a crazy librarian.

What advice do you have for young authors like us?
My first piece of advice is obvious, and it's the piece of advice that every writer gives, and that is: read. Read, read, read, read. My second piece of advice is keep a notebook, and write down anything interesting that happens. Now, don't write down stuff like, "I was going to school today and I saw a piece of grass." Nobody cares! [laughter from children] But if something interesting happens, or if you want to describe that piece of grass in a nice descriptive passage, then write it down.

How would you encourage people to read your books?
I would get a big stake and go round to their house and I'd say, "Have you read this book?" And then I would sit beside them on the sofa until they'd finished it. [more laughter from children]