Literary Curriculum Vitae (brevis)

Name:

Adrian Albert Mole

Published Work

Offally Good! – The Book! (Stoat Books, 1991)

— Cookbook based on the cult Millennium Channel offal cookery show

{Ghost-written in five days by Pauline Mole for 50% of all royalties and residuals. This explains chapter ten, ‘The Future For Men Is Bleak’, and the general over-emphasis on gender politics. My three-month struggle with the text tragically led to only one recipe – for pig’s trotters. My foreword – a learned treatise on primitive man’s experiments with the offal cut out of woolly mammoths etc. – which started so brilliantly, sadly came to nothing.}

— Reviewed in the Sunday Times Book Section – ‘Briefly’ column:

‘100 ways with offal – a hoot.’

{I bought six copies of the Sunday Times. My mother rang later to ask if I’d seen ‘her’ review}

Unpublished Work:

{everything else}

Novels

Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland

Later to be titled: Birdwatching

— A Lawrentian treatment of late twentieth-century man and his dilemma, as Jake Westmoreland returns to the town of his birth after experiencing The World

Sparg from Kronk Or Krog of Gork

— Originally a novel by Jake Westmoreland, hero of Lo!

— The novel without language within Jake Westmoreland’s novels was praised as ‘a brilliant concept’, by the renowned novelist and celebrity Angela Hacker. Faxos – April 1992

{Query: was Angela Hacker just being kind? She was drunk on Amstel most of the time. Is a novel without language within the hero’s unfinished Stone Age novel without dialogue within my novel about the dilemma of 20th century man worthy of the adjective ‘brilliant’? I wish I knew.}

Sty — The intellectual progress of a discontented pig

{My diary from Wednesday, April 12 1999 shows some early difficulties:

I embarked on a new novel, Sty, today. Progress was slow. I only managed to write 104 words, including the title and my name.

Sty, by Adrian Mole

The pig grunted in its sty. It was deeply sad. Somehow it felt different from the other pigs with which it shared a home.
‘Look at them,’ thought the pig. ‘They are oblivious to the fact that they are merely part of the food chain.’ The pig had felt discontented since it had glimpsed Alain de Botton’s TV programme, Philosophy: A Guide to Life, through a gap in the pig farmer’s curtain. The wisdom of Socrates, Epicurus and Montaigne had brought home to the pig that it was completely uneducated and knew nothing of the world beyond the sty.

Notes on new novel:

1. Should the pig have a name?
2. Should the pig’s thoughts be in quotes?
3. Has the story got legs? Or is the main protagonist (the pig) too restricting a character, i.e., being (a) unable to communicate with the other pigs and (b) never leaving the sty?}

Epic Poetry

The Restless Tadpole

A tadpole’s journey from the early days of frogspawnhood to the dying moments of old frogdom

Prospectus for Monograph (Non-fiction)

Celebrity and Madness (A work in progress)

— Charts the rise of celebritocracy and the subsequent demise of democracy in Britain today

I present part of the original preface:

I have been working on a book called Celebrity and Madness, for some weeks. On many an occasion I have stayed up until almost midnight; honing the sentences, adding the adjectives and creating new verbs. (I distinctly remember, while watching the Olympics with my mother, asking her ‘Has Britain medalled yet?’)

But, I digress. Celebrity and Madness is a well-researched work – many copies of the News of the World, Hello! and Heat magazines were read. Scores of letters were written, though it must be said that few celebrities had the courtesy to reply. I listened to countless anecdotes told by my dearest friend, the recently disgraced Dr. Pandora Braithwaite MP; former junior minister in the Department of the Environment, whose own book, Out of the Box was published last year, and condemned by Playboy, who said, ‘leaves a bad taste in the mouth’.

The book contains many examples of celebrities and their madness:

• David Beckham has locked the keys inside his car on 91 different occasions!
• Prince Charles tried to teach his favourite dog, Toby, to recite the Lords Prayer!
• Liz Hurley keeps a succession of lucky spiders in a customized, Gucci, matchbox!
• Sven Goran-Eriksson has a photograph of a long-dead pet reindeer on his bedside table!

{Professor Laurie Taylor, the eminent sociologist, was sent a rough first draft and returned a compliment slip acknowledging receipt}

Situation Comedy

The White Van

A serial killer comedy, hopefully starring Russell Brand as the serial killer and Kerry Katona as his wife. (The above performers have yet to be approached).

Plays

Plague!

Writer/Dramaturg of a community play involving the total population of Mangold Parva (144 Souls plus intelligent animals), loosely based on the fact that the village was a centre for the Black Death. The animals are required to take part.

A typical stage direction would be: ‘The dogs bow their heads in unison and the chicken goes to centre stage and lays an egg’. This coup de theatre may require the help of an animal trainer. Difficult, but I think we can pull it off.

Agent

Brick Eagleburger at Brick Eagleburger Associates

brickeagleburger@yanklit.com

Tuesday, November 21, 2000:

Brick Eagleburger has sent my epic poem, The Restless Tadpole, to a certain Geoffrey Perkins at BBC TV Centre. I asked Brick which department Mr Perkins worked in. Brick said, ‘The guy’s head of fuckin’ comedy.’ I angrily pointed out that The Restless Tadpole is an entirely serious dramatic work written in the tradition of the Icelandic sagas. Brick said, ‘Listen up, Adrian, I flicked through the fuckin’ manuscript Tadpole and I godda tell ya I almost peed my fuckin’ pants, it’s so funny.’ Brick carried on, ‘My favourite scene is when the tadpole is lying in Marilyn Monroe’s garden pond and it overhears Arthur Miller talking crap about Tolstoy.’
I have always known that Brick Eagleburger is a Philistine; however, he is now totally misrepresenting me and my work.

This is where Mr Eagleburger and myself parted company for a while.}