Tom Sharpe

Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue novelist, dies aged 85

The British satirical author Tom Sharpe, who wrote the 1974 novel Porterhouse Blue, has died aged 85.

Anyone familiar with the work of Jenny Eclair will recognise her hand in this madcap, slightly ramshackle new comedy. Eclair co-wrote the story with Julie Balloo about washed-up, middle-aged, divorced Fleet Street journalist Ros, who has ended up living in her childhood village of Norton Tripton.

The only job she can get is working for her monstrous ex's sister, who runs the local tourist website - but is patently not happy doing stories about flower displays. Eclair has great fun portraying Ros's angry desperation at how her life has detoured into a cul-de-sac as her ex-husband's career goes stratospheric, while Mark Heap brings his trademark oddball schtick to the role of her sidekick.

It's a riotous farce that reminded me of the stories of Tom Sharpe in its eccentric characters and extreme situations.

Tom Sharpe on PG Wodehouse

On the eve of a new six-part adaptation of the Blandings stories by BBC One, author Tom Sharpe tells of his love for the stories of PG Wodehouse.

The cast is as rich as the menu: Ian Richardson, Charles Gray, Griff Rhys Jones and David Jason, whose galvanic twitches of the head look like an attempt to screw his bowler hat on firmly without using his hands.

Blott, as the front titles and rude music attest, was intended to be a seaside postcard. It is extraordinary that rational people could have worked on this serial for months without feeling a frightful sense of premonition. The same sensation that swept Oates when he first clapped eyes on his spavined ponies.

The temptation to set off sideways like this suggests that I don't much fancy the way ahead. Blott on the Landscape is a brisk whisking of sex and violence, say Lady Chatterley's Lover and World War II, into heartless farce. I rather wonder if black farce is at home on television. The audience is, which may be the trouble.