Back in 1999, Jonathan Blyth's The Law of the Playground, "the least coherent encyclopaedia of playground insults on the internet", became a cult website slowly growing in reputation. Nine years later and the puerile insults from the website have spawned into a book. A second television series, which charters the early learning days of pre-fame celebrities, is also currently showing on Channel 4. We caught up with Jonathan, as he tells us about these exciting times...

Q1. Why did you decide to write a book about our delinquent childhood times?

"I didn't really decide to write a book, I decided to put my personal memories of the insults at my school on the internet. To make it seem less vain and pointless, I presented it as a dictionary, and asked a few of my mates from different schools to share anything they had. This was back in 1999, I think, and the website's been slowly growing since then. I got lucky with the book – the tatty idiot's pitch I sent off to a few agents fell into the hands of someone who'd read the website, and decided it might work. Thankfully it did, I’m still dead proud of the book.

Q2. What's your favourite childhood insult?

"I like the ones I grew up with most, obviously. Our bullies weren't the best at maths, but they could whip an insult out before you'd blinked. A kid with a brain tumour was renamed Kebab, because he said it had been removed with a steel pole. A guy who'd been circumcised was called BT, because he'd been cut off. Just being there when a nickname is born makes is amazing – wondering whether it'll stick, then five years later wondering if you’ll ever get your real name back.

"One kid was called Sponge for two years because it was rumoured he'd received a sponge bath. I still love that one – who even thinks of teenage boys getting sponge baths? It's filthy, it's a bit cruel, but it's so innocent. To this day, I often find the word sponge on the tip of my tongue, but I have to stop myself saying it, because I’m aware it makes no sense.

Q3. Who did you ask, or did you take your findings from the website?

"Pretty much all of the content of the book is taken from the website, but we did rewrite it heavily for the book. The website is a bit chaotic, and written in lots of different voices. There are people who remember their childhood days with the dry wit of Oscar Wilde, but there are five hundred times that number of people who wrote in just to say "there is a girl in my class she is so fat sometimes we throw things at her and call her fat". Anyone who's spent any time on the internet knows it's full of arseholes.

Q4. Do you think the TV show does the book justice?

"The TV show is great, but you can't really compare the two. For some reason, having celebrities telling you their stories stops the story being that shocking, because they're there, on telly, being successful and beautiful. The website doesn't have that reassurance that everything's OK, and it ranges from whimsical cock drawings to really eye-opening and sometimes terrifying stories. The TV show – and I think this is probably a sensible decision – keeps everything light. So yeah, the TV show is great, the website is great, but they're not the same thing.

Q5. What is your favourite celebrity's childhood story?

"It's still a bit mind-blowing that Vic Reeves is on in. I was invited to shooting on the day he was filming, and I had to say no, because I'd have shit my pants. And David Mitchell is lovely too; I could curl up on his lap and listen to him all day. My favourite stories are the ones that are personal. I'm not a big fan of hearing famous people say things like "Do you remember Joey Deacon, eh?" because anyone can do that down the pub. I like hearing about their personal stuff, stuff that they probably wouldn't even have thought to put in their third autobiography.

Q6. What is the strangest submission on the website you've had?

"Jesus, that's a big one. There's the Train Man, who set up a living room out of discarded furniture on the train tracks. There are a few stories of children who can only be in mental or penal institutions now, like Chisel Man, who was one man's story of staying on the right side of someone who would irrationally stab people with woodwork chisels. I also like Cha-Man, because it's a story about a slow kid who became the year hero. Basically, I like any story that has a character who's named like a superhero."