The makers of the golden syrup were Tate and Lyle. The makers of this syrup put on their can a picture of the partially rotted corpse of a lion with bees flying around it, and the Biblical quote…” Judges 14: 14: “And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” The earlier origin of the quote is Biblical: “I use a quote from Hamlet in the story: Sweets to the sweet,” he notes. Hellraiser’s Pinhead would later share some of these characteristics and be all the more terrifying for it. The character of the Candyman draws upon a motif Clive had long been developing since writing his 1973 play, Hunters in the Snow - that of the calmly spoken gentleman-villain - who seduces Helen with the poetry of Shakespeare and the measured rhythms of a lover. “This was about why we write those tales, why we hear those tales. “I was writing about the experience of horror,” says Clive.

To live in people’s dreams to be whispered at street corners, but not have to be.’

Marrying common elements and fears - the hook-handed man, castration, the uncatchable killer and urban brutality - the story explores not only the narrative of an urban myth but the very nature of mythology, playing on the fame of a whispered myth as it spreads:

Originally published in 1985 in Volume Five of the Books of Blood, Clive was inspired by cautionary tales told to him as a child by his grandmother. The best tales get told again and again, and Clive’s short story, The Forbidden, filmed as Candyman and its movie sequels, falls squarely in that slot.

The forbidden candyman book