Chortle Awards 2023 nominees announced

Resident: I feel I want to keep talking.
Me: Of course! What do you want to talk about?
Resident: My heart.
Me: What about your heart?
Resident: I feel I want to touch it.
Me: Your heart? You want to touch your heart?
Resident: Yes, but I'm too frightened.
Me: What are you frightened about?
Resident: Everything. People. Things.
Me: What's frightening you at this very moment?
Resident: (Closes eyes). That I'll never be touched again. That I won't be able to get to my heart.
Me: Metaphorically?
Resident: More carrots please.

Whether he's initiating a coup d'état against new regulations with the residents, or forging a bond with the 98-year old who once called him a fat slut, Pope Lonergan work is infinitely varied. This no-holds-barred account shows what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers. Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, here you can learn everything you ever wanted to know (and a few things you probably really didn't) about Britain's care system.

This important memoir challenges us all to think differently about the value of our elderly, and also the carers who look after them.

First published: Thursday 16th June 2022

A collection of hilarious and often absurd epiphanies in the legendary comedian's life that defined him - more in a for worse than for better kind of way - and all delivered in his unique deadpan style.

Growing up, Rich Hall aspired to be a writer, and after school he trained to be a journalist. But after a stint at the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee, he found himself trying to impress a girl by doing a one-man show in a state university campus in Kansas, armed with a bucket, a loudhailer and some dog biscuits. It wasn't exactly a triumph, and he didn't get the girl, but he had found his true calling.

Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall's professional and personal life where he really had to nail it. They're not about glitz, or fame, or how he met his seventh wife at the rehab clinic and found spiritual direction. None of that happened to him.

They're about accidentally melting Kraft cheese at his first Edinburgh Festival Fringe, alienating an entire convention of RV holiday-makers in Las Vegas, singing The Who's 'You Better You Bet' at a charity gig and turning his performance into a legendary rock 'n' roll disaster, and attempting to seduce Karen, which must have been successful because she is now his wife. And other such escapades.

Hall doesn't always come out of them all covered in glory - far from it - but if someone propped him up at the end of the comedy bar and put a 50p coin in him, these are the tunes he would spin. And you'd be laughing all night.

First published: Thursday 18th August 2022

"My name is Gary. I'm a thirty-year-old legal assistant with a firm of solicitors in London. To describe me as anonymous would be unfair but to notice me other than in passing would be a rarity. I did make a good connection with a girl, but that blew up in my face and smacked my arse with a fish slice."

Gary Thorn goes for a pint with a work acquaintance called Brendan. When Brendan leaves early, Gary meets a girl in the pub. He doesn't catch her name, but falls for her anyway. When she suddenly disappears without saying goodbye, all Gary has to remember her by is the book she was reading: The Satsuma Complex. But when Brendan goes missing, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Satsuma to get some answers.

And so begins Gary's quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to finally bring some love and excitement into his unremarkable life...

A page-turning story with a cast of unforgettable characters, The Satsuma Complex is the brilliantly funny first novel by bestselling author and comedian Bob Mortimer.

First published: Thursday 27th October 2022

Dare you crack open the TerrorTome? (Mind the spine)

When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, Dark Lord of the Prolix, the hellish visions inside his head are unleashed for real. Forced to fight his escaping imagination - now leaking out of his own brain - Nick must defend the town of Stalkford from his own fictional horrors, including avascular-necrosis-obsessed serial killer Nelson Strain and Nick's dreaded throppleganger, the Dark Third.

Can he and Roz, his frequently incorrect female editor, hunt down these incarnate denizens of Nick's rampaging imaginata before they destroy Stalkford, outer Stalkford and possibly slightly further?

From the twisted genius of horror master Garth Marenghi - Frighternerman, Darkscribe, Doomsage (plus Man-Shee) - come three dark tales from his long-lost multi-volume epic: TerrorTome.

Can a brain leak?
(Yes, it can)

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'Reads like Garth's classic oeuvre of paperback horrors crossed with The X Files, Faustian myth and bits of Manimal. Plus the cover is embossed with genuine foil at his insistence and at your expense'
Ken Hodder, Head of Hodder

'These three tales of terror by Garth Marenghi are... quality'
Queen Fang, NosFor(at)um.com

'A strong beginning, deepening intrigue and a knockout ending'
How to Write Magazine

First published: Thursday 3rd November 2022