A beginner’s guide to dipping your haddock reimagines Charles Webb’s THE GRADUATE - relocating the story from the sunny millionaire suburbs of pre-hippie California, to a pre-punk council estate in the damp English Midlands. For Benjamin Braddock read Parkin Pollock, an award-winning fishmonger’s apprentice who’s worried about his future! As we share the excruciation of Parkin’s first sexual encounters, we also see him unwittingly stumble into a criminal stock market conspiracy, as well as a bizarre plot to teach Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to stepdance. If only Parkin hadn’t won that Blue Peter badge when he was eight … It’s an imaginative follow-up to Stuart Caldwell’s debut novel Fart and Toast and comes packed with a similar abundance of out-of-place celebrities, surreal humour and unexpected twists. It is slightly shorter but marginally funnier, despite the fact that belly button fluff features less prominently. For future reference, it is longer but just as amusing as his forthcoming third book, which hardly mentions belly button fluff at all.
