Nancy Cartwright is a 10-year-old boy trapped in a 40year-old woman's body. Unusually for the genre, however, his/her story (just published) is a happy one.
The boy is called Bart Simpson and, as expressed through Cartwright, he has achieved world renown, culminating with his inclusion in Time magazine's list of 100 cultural icons of the 20th century, where he featured alongside Charlie Chaplin, Picasso, and, er, Oprah Winfrey.
For Cartwright, the arrangement has been even more profitable. Her pivotal role in The Simpsons has left her both rich and (largely) unknown. Better still, in a profession where ageing actresses find good roles scarce, her partnership with Bart is insulated against the passage of time. One of them may be getting older every year, but neither of their voices is in danger of breaking soon.
This is just as well because, were Bart a real person, he would have become a teenager this year. In the frozen-world of animation, though, he remains the pre-pubescent scamp created for a series of minute-long "bumpers" on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. Also known as "interstitials", the segments were partly designed to keep viewers watching through the commercial breaks, and their fleeting portrayals of a family in which the father frequently tried to choke his son became so popular with viewers that a separate series was inevitable.
In Dublin last weekend, Cartwright recalled that she first auditioned for the underdeveloped part of Lisa ("middle child" was most of the character description) when she picked up the script for Bart ("devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, clever") and decided she wanted him instead.
The voice came immediately: "I'd used it before, but [only on] short-lived syndicated shows. It was a pony on My Little Pony, and a character named Flat Freddy Fender in a very short-lived series called Galaxy High. Normally I'd give the producer or casting director a choice of voices, but not with Bart. I knew him."
Forty-eight bumpers and two years later, the now-established team of actors found themselves reading the first full-length script (not screened first, for technical reasons) of prime-time Simpsons. Some Enchanted Evening featured Marge telling her therapist how she felt "trapped in a loveless sham of a marriage". Cartwright describes the uneasiness of all involved as they tried to come to terms with the slower pace of the dialogue, character development keeping the jokes apart, until they came to the line where the therapist advises Marge to leave her husband.
Marge: "Leave Homer?" Therapist: "Please. Don't use his real name." Marge: "Leave Pedro?".
The cast cracked up then, and the weekly events in Springfield soon had America laughing with them. There had been many prime-time animation shows before, such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons, but they hadn't been quite like this.
"We did what none of them did: which was to include references to current and historical events, political figures, musicians. It was a new kind of entertainment that all ages could enjoy. You could watch it as a child for the simple pleasure of looking at colours and shapes and movements, but as you got older and watched the re-runs you picked up things you missed when you were seven. "And I would imagine that, over here in Dublin or in other European countries, one of the reasons you seem to enjoy it so much is to see Americans poking fun at ourselves, especially the celebrities who come on."
Indeed, before the Larry Sanders Show took the idea to extremes, The Simpsons was a safe outlet for self-parody by the famous. Sometimes they merely voiced other characters, like Kirk Douglas playing a bum in Bumtown (the bad part of Springfield), or Elizabeth Taylor, arriving at the studio in regal style to voice the first word ("Daddy!") of one-year-old Maggie Simpson. But more often than not, like Bob Hope, and Mel Gibson, and Jerry Springer, they played themselves. Among the latest to join this list are the members of U2, although we won't see the results here until next year. "I'm sorry, I can't reveal the plot," says Cartwright, "because I can't remember it! I wasn't there that day anyway."
Back in 1989, even as she was "gestating" her full-length character, Nancy was pregnant with her first child, and her fervent prayer was "Don't let it be Bart!" As luck would have it, it turned out to be a girl, although she soon would have a younger brother. The happy timing means that, albeit in reverse order, the children are now the same ages as Bart and Lisa and old enough to appreciate how "seriously cool" their mother is.
"I am the most popular mom in school. It's like `Do Bart! Do Bart!' So I say [she switches to Bart-speak]: `No way, man!' and everybody's happy. Except this one kid who used to have a penchant for interviewing me - I think he wanted to be a journalist when he grew up - and he was always asking me questions. `No way man!' was never enough for him, so I had to say one day: `You know what, I'm a mom. You gotta just let me be a mom at school.' And he got it, then."
Success did change the Simpsons, although most of the changes came early on. Homer became less "psychotic", in Nancy's words, "and more of a lovable idiot". Marge lost her "ditzier" tendencies to become the stable family-anchor of later programmes. Middle-child Lisa developed into the sort of high-minded eight-year-old who can describe her brother as "a vile burlesque of irrepressible youth". And Bart evolved into a somewhat sweeter child, even if "he does love his sister," is the strongest defence of him Nancy can make.
The series has long acquired a mainstream audience while retaining some of the trappings of cult success: die-hard fans priding themselves on encyclopaedic knowledge of its characters. On the subject of which, only last week, a contestant on the British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? missed out on £32,000 for not knowing that Selma Bouvier was one of Marge Simpson's chain-smoking sisters. As any serious fan knows, she's the one who married Sideshow Bob (shortly after he served his prison sentence for framing Krusty the Clown) but parted from him amicably following his attempt to blow her up during their honeymoon. This was before her equally failed second marriage to actor-on-the-slide Troy McClure, whose career has never recovered from an angling scandal involving underage fish. The only thing Selma hates more than her brother-in-law Homer is being single; and she is not to be confused with her twin sister Patty, who smokes more and prides herself on being the less desperate of the two. But "my children will kill me for not knowing," was all the contestant could tell Chris Tarrant.
Along the way, The Simpsons has become a not-so-minor industry: from the army of writers involved to the trans-continental production process. The art remains 100 per cent hand-painted, and with between 19,000 and 33,000 picture "cels" used per episode, the process is too expensive for the US, so the painting is done in Korea instead.
The series turned Cartwright from a respected voice-over artist into a superstar of the animation world, although her determination to succeed had never been lacking. As a teenager in Ohio, she had the nerve to phone her hero Daws Butler (the voice of Yogi Bear) in Hollywood, and although she claims she'd never heard of an answering machine at that time, she responded in kind to Butler's joke-English-butler recording. He returned the call and became her mentor. "That was the pivotal incident in my life," she says, "It's what got me here today."
Apart from the money (a reported $50,000 for each episode, although she declines to discuss it on the grounds that it can "upset readers"), she is most grateful to the show for giving her "time and freedom". A member of the Church of Scientology, she supports a number of voluntary organisations, including three which "utilise the research of humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard" in the causes of drug rehabilitation, promotion of literacy and "happy living". She also has her own production company, Happy House; planned projects include a feature-length animated film on slavery in America, for which she needs $100 million backing.
"This is really a project from my heart," she says of the film. "The subject matter is . . . well, it's not The Simpsons! It's ugly what we did to each other in the past. But my feeling is that art should move people, that it can elevate people and enlighten them. And that's where I am going with this story: I want to present a subject matter that nobody wants to look at, basically."
My Life as a Ten-Year-Old Boy is published by Bloomsbury, priced £12.99 in UK