Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off

World traveller and proud graduate in Canadian Studies, Giles Wemmbley Hogg, discovers that the World Cup is taking place in a land called Germany. He encounters the Iranian National Squad, a pig-liver doughnut, two sombreros and a man with a red cross painted on his face.

Budleigh Salterton's most famous citizen, traveller and worldly guru knows nothing about football or Germany, but from the moment he decides to book a strolling holiday in the Schwarzwald ("because it'll be nice and quiet this time of year"), he pitches headlong into the thrilling arena of the World Cup.

He may never have played football, but he was Sports Monitor at school (or, as he puts it, "I was the only one allowed to touch the Master's ballbag at Charterhouse").

Transmitting during the three weeks of the competition itself, Giles reports from the competition whilst filling in his massive Fussballweltmeisterschaftschautafel (wall chart) with coloured pens ("I was going to do all the Groups with different colours, but I accidentally spilt a bit of yellowy nog over Group E and Portugal, so it's all got a bit confusing").

But interwoven with all this, Giles inevitably finds himself on a series of baffling adventures and mishaps, involving, amongst other things, the Iranian squad, a stolen World Cup, a very big cake and fifty sticks of Leipzig rock.

And to make matters worse, his fiancee Bella is coming out to meet him in Nuremberg to help plan their forthcoming wedding. As is her mother.