Comic novel set amidst British National Press when Prime Ministerial sex scandal rocks Government. When Fisher, the literary editor of The Conscience, is fired he goes quietly. But not as quietly as it seems. Before long he is back in journalism thinly disguised as a " Media Consultant " wreaking havoc among his former employers. By the time he has finished, the Prime Minister and his boyfriend are inextricably entwined with Great Britain's women's rugby team as they are hunted down by a motley gang of hacks organised by Fisher ina war torn banana republic about which no newspaper wishes to know anything unless it is to do with sex, soap or the Royal Family.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
A veteran British journalists bawdy, acrid novel about Fleet Street's pursuit of an outed gay Prime Minister, a Caribbean island revolution, and a female rugby team. Expertly balancing a comic house of cards with a very full deck of characters, Heald (A Classic Christmas Crime, 1997, etc.) tries for the newsman-turned-novelist's Holy Grail: a modern version of Evelyn Waugh's classic Scoop. He gets nearly everything about the moldering profession right, following nominal protagonist Fisher from the time of his firing to his reinvention as a Media Consultant to dictators and his rehiring yet again after a press junket he's arranged plumps down an array of hacks on the very island where the outed PM has fled. The realistic (and cozily competitive) media barons are avaricious Hong Kong king of sleaze Chinese Ken and ancient Lady Beatrice, who has more gumption in her fragile bones than her three sons (all Majors) put together. Healds array of journalists is a rogues gallery of hackdom, from the husband-and-wife sex-writing team to the worldly war correspondent who's so ``been there done that'' that he writes only for his diary. Yet despite all thisand a plot of appropriate superficiality, a turning point of which requires a female rugby team to de-pants the PM and throw him into a swimming poolHealds vision of Tabloid Hell where the soulless hacks of journalism battle the empty suits of government never quite reaches a boil. We've seen too many such feeding frenzies in real life, perhaps. Too bad this one didn't come out two years ago, when Tina Brown was still editing The New Yorker and Anglophilia was all the rage. Clever but dated, it may find its true place as a textbook in journalism school. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Tim Heald is a biographer, crimewriter and journalist. He was chosen by Prince Philip to be his biographer on his 70th birthday. He has been a contributor to many television obituaries of royal figures, including Prince Philip, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother.
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