Originally published June 2022.
Our writer set out to find out if this is actually true.
“Daddy, why are you writing about women’s boobs?” I turn puce as my 11-year-old stares me down. I stay silent and she repeats the question. My wife looks as me as if I have burned her shoe collection. My daughter had glanced at my PC for 10 seconds and it’s sod’s law that the only line she read does indeed discuss female anatomy. This is a new low in my parenting and not for the first time I wonder why I’m trying to write a book.
Fiction happened by accident. I had the hilarious and brilliant idea in Lockdown 2 (Jan 2021) of writing a health book with just four words: “Eat Less, Exercise More.” This morphed into The Diet & Health Book for Morons, as I am a moron in the kitchen. Yet I had one minor problem: I know nothing about the subject. That does not stop MPs and Covid gurus, I hear you say. You’re right, but I’m not a natural bullshitter. Either I could do extensive research or I could quit. I chose the latter.
Reflecting that ‘pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever’, I was digesting another anti-woke article in the Daily Mail (it was lockdown, forgive me) and a phrase came to mind: Pale, Male, Fail. I saw a way forward. I would choose pain, a lot of pain: the pain of writing fiction. It would be about a 50-something high-flyer (he/him) whose life falls apart at work and at home. It would skewer woke-ism, sure, but with balanced narratives to avoid being a sub-UKIP rant. It would be a book that guys can relate to and their wives can read to understand their husbands further. It would be, er, funny. It would aim for ‘Nick Hornby meets PJ O’Rourke’, which is like a novice developer aiming for the design of Urban Splash and the margins of Berkeley Homes.
