Aged twenty-five, dressed as Che Guevara, Nigel Planer answers an ad for a room and his life changes for ever.Both a memoir and a love story, Young Once follows his journey, from bell-ringer to gravedigger, from university dropout to long-term patient of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and all the other bizarre events that shape him, until the day he meets Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in a former strip club and the 1980s Comedy Revoluti...

**'**Beautifully written, deliciously evocative, funny and touching'STEPHEN FRY'A thermometer up the Khyber Pass of Comedy, expertly administered'RICHARD E GRANTAged twenty-five, dressed as Che Guevara, Nigel Planer answers an ad for a room and his life changes for ever.Both a memoir and a love story, Young Once follows his journey, from bell-ringer to gravedig...

As Jeremiah Bourne is swept from his crumbling home in Blackfriars in 2019 to the same house in 1910, he suddenly faces two questions: how did he get here, and how can he return to his own time?On his quest for answers, he encounters a cast of comic characters and situations: a coven of free-thinking spiritualists, a futuristic residents' association, warring street gangs, eugenic scientists, aggressive domestic servants and a nudist magistrate. As events unfold, Jeremiah begins to...

High up on the wooden scaffolding tower of the Sistine Chapel, two fresco plasterers get on with the day’s work preparing the ceiling for their boss Michelangelo who has not bothered to turn up for work again. As they do so, they bemoan the uselessness of the great master. Pope Julius and Cardinal Alidosi visit the chapel to inspect the progress of their commission. They are never very impressed, and the Pope is more concerned about getting Michelangelo to do his funeral monument at a knoc...

At the heart of this explosive BBC Radio 4 comedy-drama are two morally opposed characters, both in love with the same woman, who has just - tragically - died. Originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 22 March 2011, The Magnificent Andrea is the first original radio play by Nigel Planer ('The Young Ones', 'Hairspray'), in which two wonderful characters, Barry (Roger Allam) and Nigel (Nigel Planer), collide and wrestle over the memory of their shared inspirational warrior wo...

Stranded in the chaos of 1910, Jeremiah Bourne must outwit a bizarre cast of characters to find his way back to modern London. This fast-paced odyssey turns a temporal accident into a desperate quest to solve his mother's disappearance. 'Funny, perceptive and hugely readable' Ben Elton As Jeremiah Bourne is swept from his crumbling home in Blackfriars in 2019 to the same house in 1910, he suddenly faces two questions: how did he get here, and how can he return to his own time? On his quest...

Tinker's Cottage nestles in a forgotten corner of deepest Somerset. It also happens to sit on a weak point in the space time continuum… which is somewhat unfortunate for Ian Faulkener, a graphic novelist from London, who was hoping for some peace and quiet in which to recuperate following a very messy breakdown. It was the cats that first alerted Ian to the fact that something was not quite right with Tinker's Cottage… the cats, and of course the Pope, disappearing literary agents, mislaid...

When Shadeys Bank loses another C.E.O. to a scandal, they are desperate to show they’ve reformed. Who better to present their redemption than a country vicar?Reverend Tom Goodman is ousted from his job as a country vicar for allowing a homeless family to stay in the church hall. Meanwhile, a major bank is trying to rescue its image after the latest in a long string of financial scandals. It seems like the perfect match and Goodman is hastily appointed as the bank’s new C.E.O. All t...

An exuberant, hilarious and wildly entertaining fairy tale with a cast of characters who are good, bad and very, very ugly.All is not well in the crumbling castle high above the mountain village of Fracture. The sorceress Lady Lamorna has her heart set on a new robe. A very expensive new robe. To get the cash she will stop at nothing, including kidnapping, blackmail and more than a little black magic. But she reckons without the heroic Gracie Gillypot, not to mention a gallant if r...

Each of us has giggled uncontrollably as a child or adult at some silly nothing, some play on words, some nonsense that, for a moment at least, makes the world seem genuinely funny if a little mad. In this volume of Nonsense verse you’ll find many favourites to take you back to the time and place where most things are a little upside down or back to front including favourites from Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and quite a few others to giggle along with.

Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life.An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure.In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem. In this...

Alison Steadman, Morwenna Banks and Nigel Planer star in this tale of two sisters - and a mysterious stranger.Not long after their mother's death, sisters Maureen and Lesley are packing up their family home. It's a painful duty, with Maureen trying to control the worst of Lesley's projectile lamenting. Then a strange man knocks at the door and introduces himself as David Johnson, a friend of Maureen's neighbour. He'd like to view the house if they are thinking of s...