SOPHIE: It was late at night. . .
BFG: [Makes an owl hooting noise]
SOPHIE: . . . in the orphanage dormitory, Sophie couldn’t sleep. A brilliant moonbeam was shining right on to her pillow. She slipped out of bed to get a drink of water.
BFG (As Mrs. Clonkers): Sophie! Back to bed this instant. You know the rules.
SOPHIE: Mrs Clonkers! Sophie went back to bed. She tried very hard to doze off. The time ticked by.The house was absolutely silent. Perhaps, thought Sophie, this is what they call the witching hour, that special moment in the middle of the night when everyone is in a deep, deep sleep, all the dark things come out from hiding and have the world to them¬selves. She crept to the window. And suddenly she saw. . . a giant.
BFG: He stopped at the house opposite, bent down to look in a bedroom window and then.. . [PANTOMIME: Open a suitcase, take out a jar and pour its contents into the end of a horn-like trumpet. Blows through it into an imaginary window. Turn and notice Sophie] He saw Sophie.
SOPHIE: She pulled back from the window, flew across the dormitory and jumped into her bed and hid under the blanket, tingling all over.
BFG: [PANTOMIME: Peeps in the window and, with a growl, push a hand through and snatch SOPHIE DOLL, holding her up high] Aaaaaaaah! [Begins slow-motion, on-the-spot running]
SOPHIE: Running, striding, leaping through the night. Over fields, over hedges, over rivers, each stride as long as a tennis ¬court. Faster, faster, feet scarcely touching the ground. Over oceans, over forests, over moun¬tains . . .To a land unknown to human beings.
INTRODUCTION

The BFG by Roald Dahl

BFG: [Standing over SOPHIE] Ha! What has us got here? [He looks carefully at SOPHIE. At first he should not appear very friendly]
SOPHIE: [Nervously] Where am I?
BFG: This is my cave.
SOPHIE: Why did you snatch me and bring me here?
BFG: Because you saw me. If anyone is ever seeing a giant, he or she must be taken away hipswitch.
SOPHIE: Why?
BFG: Human beans is not believing in giants, is they? Human beans is not thinking giants exist.
SOPHIE: I do.
BFG: Ah, but that is because you has seen me. If I hadn’t snitched you, you would be scuddling around yodelling the news on the telly-telly bunkum box that you were actually seeing a giant, and then a great giant-hunt, a mighty giant look-see, would be starting up all over the world, and human beans would be trying to catch me and put me in the zoo with all those squiggling hippodumplings and croca¬downdillies.
SOPHIE: SO what’s going to happen to me now?
BFG: You will just have to be staying here with me for the rest of your life.
SOPHIE: Oh no!
BFG: Oh yes! Now, I is hungry!
SOPHIE: [Gasping] Please don’t eat me!
BFG: [Bellowing with laughter] Just because I is a giant, you think I is a man-gobbling canny¬bull! No!
SOPHIE: Oh, good.
BFG: Yes, you is lucky. If one of the other giants is snitching you, they is crunching you up for sure. In one scrumdiddlyumptious mouthful. Bones crackety-crackety-cracking. Gobble, gobbledy, gone!
SOPHIE: Other giants? You mean there are more of you?
BFG: Of course! This is Giant Country! [He picks up SOPHIE] Be peeping out over there, little girl, and be seeing a brain¬ bogglingsome sight.
[They peep outside]
SOPHIE: Gosh!
BFG: Is you believing your gogglers?
SOPHIE: What on earth are they doing?
BFG: Nothing. They is just moocheling and footcheling around and waiting for the night to come. Then they will be galloping off to places where human beans is living to find chiddlers to guzzle for their suppers.
SOPHIE: Where?
BFG: All over the world. Some I is fancying a gallop to Turkey to guzzle some tasty Turkish chid¬dlers. That’s the Bonecruncher. He is thinking
Turkish chiddlers is juiciest chiddlers. They is tasting of. . .
SOPHIE: Turkey?
BFG: No! Turkish delight!
SOPHIE: Of course. Who’s that big, fierce one?
BFG: That’s the Fleshlumpeater. He’s fancying getting his chompers round a handful of chiddlers from Wellington!
SOPHIE: Where’s Wellington?
BFG: Your head is full of squashed flies. Welling¬ton is in New Zealand.
SOPHIE: What do children in Wellington taste of?
BFG: Boots, of course.
SOPHIE: But boots taste horrid.
BFG: Rubbsquash! Boots taste bootiful!
SOPHIE: Ha ha.
BFG: That’s the Bloodbottler. He is thinking the English chiddlers is tasting ever so wonderfully of crodscollop.
SOPHIE: I’m not sure I know what that means.
BFG: Meanings is not important. I cannot be right all the time. Quite often I is left instead of right. Let’s go back. You will be coming to an ucky-mucky end if any of them should ever be getting his gogglers upon you. You would be swallowed up like a piece of frumpkin pie, all in one dollop. [They return inside the cave] There. You is safe in here.
SOPHIE: I think eating children is horrible.
BFG: I has told you. I is not eating chiddlers. Not I! I is a freaky giant! I is a nice and jumbly giant! I is the BFG.
SOPHIE: The BFG?
BFG: The Big Friendly Giant! What is your name?
SOPHIE: My name is Sophie.
BFG: How is you doing, Sophie? [He gently shakes hands with SOPHIE] Is you quite snuggly in your nightie, Sophie? You isn’t fridgy cold?
SOPHIE: I’m fine.
BFG: I cannot help thinking about your poor mother and father. By now. they must be jipping and skumping all over the house shout¬ing, ‘Hallo, hallo, where is Sophie gone?’
SOPHIE: I don’t have a mother and father. They died when I was a baby.
BFG: You is a norphan?
SOPHIE: Yes.
BFG: Oh you poor little scrumplet. You is making me sad.
SOPHIE: Don’t be sad. No one at the orphanage will be worrying much about me.
BFG: Was you happy there?
SOPHIE: I hated it. Mrs Clonkers locked me in the cellar once.
BFG: Why?
SOPHIE: For not folding up my clothes.
¬BFG: The rotten old rotrasper!
SOPHIE: It was horrid. There were rats down there.
BFG: The filthy old fizzwiggler! You is making me sadder than ever.
SOPHIE: Don’t cry, BFG. Please. [The BFG recovers a little] Listen, BFG, we can’t just sit here and do nothing.
BFG: What is you meaning?
SOPHIE: We can’t let any more children be eaten. We’ve got to stop those brutes.
BFG: Us? Redunculus and umpossible.
SOPHIE: BFG, tell me – if you don’t eat humans, what do you eat?
BFG: [Sitting] That, little Sophie, is a squelching tricky problem. In this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pig¬winkles is simply not growing. Nothing is grow¬ing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It is called the snozzcumber.
SOPHIE: The snozzcumber? There’s no such thing.
BFG: Is you calling me a fibster?
SOPHIE: Well. . .
BFG: [Getting cross] Just because you has not seen something isn’t meaning it isn’t existing. What about the great squizzly scotch-hopper?
SOPHIE: I beg your pardon?
BFG: And the humplecrimp?
SOPHIE: What’s that?
BFG: And the wraprascal? And the crumpscod¬dle?
SOPHIE: Are they animals?
BFG: They is common animals. Swipe my swog¬gles! I is not a very know-all giant myself, but it seems to me you is an absolutely know¬ nothing human bean. Your brain is full of rotten-wool.
SOPHIE: You mean cotton-wool.
BFG: What I mean and what I say is two different things. [He stands] I will now show you the repulsant snozzcumber. [The BFG finds a huge black and white striped, cucumber-shaped vegetable, rather like a giant’s club]
SOPHIE: Gosh. It doesn’t look very tasty.
BFG: It’s disgusterous! It’s sickable! It’s maggot¬ wise! [He breaks it in two] Try some. [He holds one half towards SOPHIE]
SOPHIE: Pooh! No, thank you.
BFG: There’s nothing else to guzzle. Have a go.
SOPHIE: Uggggggggh! Oh no! It tastes of frogskins. And rotten fish.
BFG: [Roaring with laughter] Worse than that! To me it is tasting of clockcoaches and slime¬ wanglers.
SOPHIE: Do I really have to eat it?
BFG: Unless you is wanting to become so thin you will be disappearing into a thick ear.
SOPHIE: Into thin air. A thick ear is something quite different.
BFG: [Going to answer back, but checking himself] Words is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me. [He takes out a bottle of green liquid]
SOPHIE: [Reading from the bottle] Frobscottle?
BFG: Frobscottle. I drink it lots. Delumptious, fizzy frob¬scottle! [He removes the stopper. There is a fizzing sound.]
SOPHIE: Hey, look! It’s fizzing the wrong way!
BFG: What is you meaning?
SOPHIE: Downwards. In our fizzy drinks, like Coke and Pepsi, the bubbles go upwards.
BFG: Flushbunking rubbsquash!
SOPHIE: They do!
BFG: Upwards is the wrong way.
SOPHIE: Why?
BFG: If you is not seeing why, you must be as quacky as a duckhound! Upgoing bubbles is a catasterous disastrophe.
SOPHIE: But why?
BFG: Listen. When you is drinking this cokey drink of yours, it is going straight down into your tummy. Is that right? Or is it left?
SOPHIE: It’s right.
BFG: And the bubbles is going also into your tummy. Right or left?
SOPHIE: Right again.
BFG: If the bubbles is fizzing upwards, they will all come swishwiffing up your throat and out of your mouth and make a foulsome belchy burp!
SOPHIE: That’s often true. But what’s wrong with a little burp now and again? It’s sort of fun.
BFG: Burping is filthsome. Us giants is never doing it.
SOPHIE: But with your drink. . .
BFG: Frobscottle.
SOPHIE: With frobscottle, the bubbles in your tummy will be going downwards and that could have a far nastier result.
BFG: Why nasty?
SOPHIE: Because they’ll be coming out some¬ where else with an even louder and ruder noise.
BFG: A whizzpopper! Us giants is making whizz¬poppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears!
SOPHIE: But it’s. . . it’s rude!
BFG: But you is whizzpopping, is you not, now and again?
SOPHIE: Everyone is . . . whizzpopping. Kings and queens, film stars, even little babies. But where I come from, it’s not polite to talk about it.
BFG: Redunculous! If everyone is making whizz¬poppers, then why not talk about it? Now, let’s be having a swiggle and seeing the result! [The BFG drinks from the bottle. Pauses. Then ecstasy fills his face. A very loud whizzpopper nearly shoots him in the air] Whoopee! [And another] Wheeee! [And another] Wheeeeeeee! [SOPHIE laughs, in spite of herself] Have some yourself.
SOPHIE: Well. . .
BFG: Go on. It’s gloriumptious!
SOPHIE: It’s lovely.
BFG: Just wait! [Suddenly a whizzpopper propels SOPHIE into the air. Then a succession of whizz¬poppers sends her up over, over again]
SOPHIE: Wheee! Wheeeeee! [The BFG roars with laughter.]
BFG: [Yawning] Time for a snoozy sleep. Good night, Sophie.
SOPHIE: [Sleepily] That was fun. Goodnight, BFG.