I was woken up early by my ridiculously loud door-bell and picked up my video answer phone to discover the postman was there with a parcel for me. Was it a late birthday present or a bomb from an aggrieved Catholic who had forgotten the bits about turning the other cheek and it being wrong to kill people?
As it turned out it was a package from Ebury Press my erstwhile publishers. What did they want? It seemed to be some books, but why would they be sending me books, unless to taunt me with the fact that they are happy to publish other authors, but not me anymore.
I opened up the jiffy bag and inside were four pink hard back tomes with some strange alien language on the cover. Having just woken up it took me a few seconds to realise that these were copies of the Russian version of my "Talking Cock" book. How cool is that? I will tell you, it is very cool.
I had kind of forgotten that I'd had a message from my publisher last year
telling me the Russians were interested in publishing the book, so now to be standing there in my dressing-gown holding this pink, hard thing in my hands gave me a slightly odd feeling in my stomach. One that was not unpleasant.
Apparently it's a totally faithful translation (from what I can tell) still including things like the Max Wall joke which was fairly impenetrable even if you were from the UK. All the pictures are there and it looks like all the text. It's just written in the kind of ridiculous gobbledegook that is
usually favoured by people trying to sell you hairless cats.
It was a very surreal and gratifying experience. I dread to think what the Russians will make of the work and it's weird to think that of all the countries in the world this is the only one that had so far wanted to translate my book. I am confident it will make just as big a splash over there as it did when it came out here (which is to say that there will be no splash whatsoever). Yet it gives me pleasure to think that the descendants of Rasputin might see my book on a shelf somewhere and to imagine enormous queues of women in headscarves waiting in line all day in the hope of getting their hands on a copy.
Rather aptly the book is published by Redfish (Red Herring?), which makes me again think I might be the victim of some hilarious and expensive prank at the evil hands of Dom Joly.
But if not do tell everyone you know in Russia about the book and if you are embarrassed to be seen reading the English version on the tube then why not simply learn to read Russian and you will be able to sit there, as happy as you like, with no-one even knowing that the book you have in your hands is all about cocks.
