This is a very clever book hiding under an apparently trashy exterior with its bright in-your-face colours, trumpeting the fact that it won the Bad Sex Award. To be honest my main reason for picking it off the shelf was to see how bad it has to be to win that particular gong.

Telling the story of an ordinary bloke who works in a bookshop in London and writes a bit of poetry in his spare time, who somehow gets into a relationship with an internationally famous singer/film star, it has a lot to say about the cult of celebrity which if anything has intensified since this book was written. A lot of books have invented celebrities in them, but few have explained quite as well as this one why celebs behave as they do, or or contrasted quite as well the difference between their lifestyles and that of the ordinary joe.

I loved the witty descriptions (eg the estate agent with a ‘nose like a Swiss Army knife bottle opener’ who looked as if she’d been’ made out of the bits of chicken that nobody else wanted to eat’, and the Shakespeare production whose performers ‘listened with their pelvises’), I was howling with laughter in places it was so funny. Yet there was something very serious about it too, it’s not just a holiday read though it would make your holiday a lot of fun.

And how bad is the sex? Pretty bad, though it’s definitely the sex that’s bad and not the writing. ( )