Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls by Robert Rankin
Paperback £5.99
Published by Corgi, 12th of October 2000
Buy from Amazon

If The Beatles can win the Eurovision Song Contest four years in a row, you can only be in Robert Rankin's very odd, very familiar world. Although it starts with a knob joke, it's a very good knob joke, and the rest of the book, unlike a couple of Rankin's most recent works, isn't dominated by knob jokes.

OK, put it another way. This is very good Robert Rankin and, as such, is a very, very good book indeed.

Set in Brentford, the location of many of the author's very best stories, it is full of characters that regular Rankin readers will be delighted to see again. Soap Distant, Small Dave and, joy of joys, John Omally and Jim Pooley. That said, if you've never picked up any of the five books in the original Brentford Trilogy, you'll still get the joke.

So, what do you get for your money? Well, you get time travelling groupies, a band called Gandhi's Hairdryer (the lead singer of which may or may not be an angel, but who's voice definitely changes things), the End Of The World, demons, unicorns, pub gigs, and that point in the history of mankind when everything has been done.

Even the knob jokes.

Robert Rankin is one of the real talents in British writing. His books always bring the kind of noisy, snorted laughter that annoys fellow train passengers. He can bring out both the humor and tension in a bizarre situation like no one else I know, including Mr. Pratchette.

Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls; your chance to become a Rankin regular!

8 out of 10

Review by Iain Lowson