In this collection of acid-tongued essays, "the U.K.'s answer to Dave Barry" skewers his American cousins ( Publishers Weekly).Winner of the Best Columnist of the Year at the British Liars' Awards and Britain's finest satirist, John O'Farrell takes dead aim at cell phones, awards ceremonies, genetic sheep splicers, America's right-wing cabal of dunces, dunderheads, dimwits, and the Big D himself. "Just when we thought the lawlessness in Iraq was over," O'F...

"[A] satire of celebrity culture and the numbing effects of fame" by the international bestselling comedy writer and author of Things Can Only Get Better ( Publishers Weekly).It's a big night at the London Palladium. Jimmy Conway is about to perform his stand-up comedy routine in front of two thousand invited guests and millions more watching the event live on TV. He steps into the spotlights and waits for the applause to die down. He tries to app...

This hilarious novel of a helicopter mom and dad is "a near-flawless caricature of 21st-century upper-middle-class parenthood" ( Publishers Weekly).Alice never imagined she would end up like this, so anxious after hearing about the dangers of meteorites that she makes her children wear bike helmets in the wading pool. Her husband, David, has taught their four-year-old to list every animal represented in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. But the more...

A hilarious and touching debut novel in the seriocomic Nick Hornby tradition.Michael Adams is a composer of advertising jingles who shares a bachelor pad with three other guys. He spends his days lying in bed (a minifridge positioned perfectly within reach) and playing trivia games with his underachieving roommates. And when he feels like it, Michael crosses the city and returns home to his unsuspecting wife and two small children. Michael is living a double life, ...

Gyles Brandreth presents the quiz show with scandal on its mindHosted by the least discreet man in Britain, broadcaster and national treasure Gyles Brandreth, Whispers is the panel game that celebrates all things scurrilous and salacious. Running the gauntlet of gossip are two teams of two guests, who test their wits and wit as they try to tell the difference between fact, fiction and outlandish speculation.In the opening round, they are challenged...

Highlights from the light-hearted literary quiz chaired by James WaltonThe Write Stuff is the book-based panel show that takes a witty and whimsical look at well-known authors and their work. Host James Walton challenges the erudite contestants with tricky literary teasers, which they endeavour to answer using a combination of knowledge and guesswork.Each episode is themed around an ‘Author of the Week’, who is the subject of the introductory round...

Clive Anderson and guests poke fun at the past in this panel show with a yesteryear twistOriginally broadcast on Radio 4 in 2003-4, We’ve Been Here Before is the topical, satirical, historical panel game that aims to show beyond all doubt that there’s nothing new in the news. Hosted by award-winning comedian, broadcaster and Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Clive Anderson, it takes a wry, witty look at long-gone days through a present-day lens, as th...

The 1993 series that sees Brian Perkins and Kate Robbins 'looking back' at the decade that was yet to happenNewsreader and ‘Godfather of Radio 4’ Brian Perkins and Spitting Image impressionist Kate Robbins star in this Sony Award-winning satirical show, set on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium. As the Nineties come to a close, they recall the tumultuous, earth-shattering events of the years 1994-1999.Join them as they revisit when the Ho...

All five series of the political satirical soap opera set in the strangely familiar village of Little Blighty - plus Christmas Specials'A comic microcosm of a country not a million miles away' Radio TimesLittle Blighty is an idyllic part of the world, with a church, a market, a small school and a pub, The Cock and Bull. Village life is pretty uneventful, though the humdrum happenings include social turmoil...

Brian Perkins and Kate Robbins ‘remember’ 21st Century years yet to happen in this futuristic 1994 comedy showFirst broadcast (with the aid of a crystal ball) in summer 1994, the Sony Award-winning show returns for a second series starring the ‘Godfather of Radio 4’, Brian Perkins, and Spitting Image impressionist Kate Robbins. This time, they turn their comic gaze on six roller-coaster years from the 21st Century: 2001, 2005, 2010, 2021, 2025 and 2099.

Actress and #1 UK bestselling author Dawn French's Oh Dear Silvia is the clever, touching, and compelling story of one mysterious woman trapped in a coma.After a fall from a balcony, Silvia lies unconscious in a hospital bed, plagued by a stream of often funny and sometimes poignant visits from friends and family, each of whom knows a different piece of the puzzle that is Silvia Shute.And, as she lies there listening to all of her visitors, the dark ...

**An unforgettable narrative—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet—of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.“Strange weather brings out strange behavior.” London, 1976. In the thick of a record-breaking heatwave, Gretta Riordan’s newly retired husband has cleaned out his bank account and vanished. Now, for the first time i...