Julian Gough

Forgot to mention, I'll be talking about the short story, and the BBC National Short Story Award, on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, later today (Friday July 4th 2008) at the maythesweetlordhelpus hour of 7.20 in the morning. (There's a seven-twenty in the MORNING as well? Who knew?)

Totally forgot to mention it in time for anyone to actually tune in, sorry. This is not because I'm blasé, it's because I'm totally untogether (and find it hard to believe anyone would be interested in my opinion of the short story).

 I will be talking for about ten seconds, probably, so you missed nuthin'.

I am currently on the run in Croatia, after an unfortunate pignapping incident got slightly out of hand...  I'll post properly soon, if possible, but I hear footsteps on the stairs... got to go now...

Don't worry, Will Self's pig is safe and happy, though jetlagged, and perhaps a little hungover...

It is not often an author is driven by circumstances to steal another author's pig, but recent scandalous events forced my hand.

 Some of you will recall my glee when I was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize a few weeks ago, alongside such old and new stars as Alan Bennett, Will Self, Garrison Keillor and Joe Dunthorne.

A noble prize, previously won by books such as Vernon God Little, and A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, the winner is showered in champagne and given a pig at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales, just over the border from England. (You don't get to keep the pig, but they name it after your book, and take your photo with it, to the great amusement of future generations).

You can imagine then my dismay when I discovered, shortly afterwards, buried in the small print of the Hay-on-Wye festival programme, the odd phrase "Will Self, winner of the 2008  Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize." Winner? WINNER?!?!?!

As the festival program had gone to print before the shortlist was announced, this meant that the prize committee had picked the winner before they had announced, or perhaps even picked, the shortlist. It was a stitch-up. But worse, I had been denied my rightful month of anticipation, tingling, hiccups and giddy excitement.

Also I'd put serious money on Alan Bennett to win. His The Uncommon Reader is a little masterpiece. Something had to be done.

I thought long and hard. The prize is named after that comic god, P. G. Wodehouse, inventor of Jeeves and Wooster. What, I thought would Wodehouse have done, faced with such provocation? Sat in his room and written another comic novel, probably. That's how he reacted to everything, including World War 2. As I was already sitting in a room writing a comic novel this wasn't much help. Action was called for, dash it. So I asked myself, what would P. G. Wodehouse's greatest creation Bertie Wooster do, nobly backed by the genius of his manservant Jeeves?

And the answer came to me as in a vision - as though the ghost of Wodehouse himself whispered in my ear - he would steal the pig.

For if there is one constant in the work of P. G. Wodehouse, from Pigs Have Wings to Pig Hooey, it is that God put pigs on this good green earth to be kidnapped. Not a chapter goes by without somebody chloroforming Lord Emsworth's favourite sow, The Empress of Blandings.

And thus I made my way to the Welsh borders and, with the assistant of my trusty gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves (not his real name, but he would like to remain anonymous for some reason), I stole Will Self's pig.

I sent the organisers this, ah, pignapping video, containing my ransom demands. Tense negotiations continued up until the last minute. They, understandably, did not wish to give the prize to the man who had stolen their pig. I offered, as a very reasonable compromise, to deliver the pig to Alan Bennett's door in London if they would re-award the prize to him. They baulked - Will Self was in the program - his angry fans, denied, might rampage, torching tents, incinerating Gore Vidal in his invalid chair... The intervention of a bishop almost led to a compromise candidate (Joe Dunthorne), but we ran out of time.

This, of course, left them one pig short for the prize ceremony. And thus it was that, as you may have read in the Guardian and Bookseller over the weekend, Will Self was not awarded his pig. I was wondering how they would get over this, and so I attended the ceremony in disguise. The organisers, rather anticlimactically, pretended an outbreak of pig disease had kept the pig away, and they showed a video of a pig instead.

And so the situation rests.  The pig is in a safe place, and receiving the best of care.  For now.

It is to be hoped that the organisers of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize will give in to my very reasonable demands and re-award the Wodehouse Prize to Alan Bennett. Otherwise, I'm afraid they will get their pig back sausage by sausage.

Harsh, I know, but when you mess with the affections of six comic novelists, somebody's going to get hurt. 

Well, it seems I have been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, alongside Alan Bennett (he wrote The Madness of King George!), Will Self (he wrote Great Apes!), Garrison Keillor (he wrote Lake Wobegon Days!), John Walsh (he once wrote in the Independent that I looked like a member of the Proclaimers!), and Joe Dunthorne (he wrote the extremely acclaimed first novel Submarine, and is only eight years old!)

Very very exciting. Previous winners include DBC Pierre, for Vernon God Little, Jonathan Coe, for The Rotters' Club, Jasper Fforde, for The Well of Lost Plots, and Marina Lewycka, for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

 They do not insult you with money, either. Bollinger give you a shitload of champagne, Everyman give you sixty volumes of PG Wodehouse in hardback, and the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival names a large pig after your book. What a year you could have, reading Wodehouse, drinking Bollinger, and... er... whatever it is that you do with pigs.

Unsurprisingly, for it is marvellous, I had picked Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader as one of my Books of 2007. I even bought my mother a copy for Christmas. Now he and I rub shoulders on a shortlist. My mother is delighted. I can only hope that none of the others bought their mothers a copy of my book for Christmas, considering how filthy it is. Personally, I hope Alan Bennett wins. His book is far more suitable for the nation's impressionable youth.

I have always argued that comedy is superior to tragedy, and this excellent shortlist proves my point. The tragic is a rather narrow genre, the comic is infinite. What other prize would place a story about a refined elderly lady reading books, in competition with the adventures of a Tipperary orphan with two penises who urinates on a politician while a mob of fifty thousand enraged farmers burn down his orphanage? Now, that's what the people want to see in a literary prize - senile dementia versus penile dementia.

May the best book win. Or, failing that, my one.


Indeed, I do believe that Jude: Level 1 is the first book featuring a hero with two penises to be nominated for a major UK literary award. Of course, it merely follows the American success of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize with a hero who had both a penis and a vagina.

In the everevolving literary world, are two sets of genitals the new one set of genitals? Will the next Booker winner be a realistic, psychologically nuanced, slightly depressed novel featuring a funeral at which a dark family secret is finally revealed and it turns out to be sex abuse yet again, but with two penises?

We shall see. 

Should have mentioned this weeks ago, forgot.

Start magazine (which covers arts and culture in the south-east of Ireland) is running an open competition to review Jude: Level 1.  Reviews can be up to 600 words long, and should be sent to startmagazine@eircom.net . The best review will win a €100 book token, and will be printed in the summer issue of the magazine.

Closing date is the 16th of April, so not a lot of time left...