Fortysomething

Paul Slippery is forty-nine-and-a-half. He has been married for twenty-five years. His wife spends more time at her job than at home and his three sons are growing up and growing away from him. As if this wasn't enough, for the last twenty-five years he has starred as Dr Esmond Pennebaker in a radio soap opera, and now someone at the BBC wants to kill him off.

So will he make it to his big day? Does Estelle really love him? Why do his sons want to have sex with the wrong girls? Why are there so many cross-dressers at the BBC? And, most importantly, when did he last have sex with his wife?

In the tradition of 'Diary Of A Nobody' and a decade or two beyond Adrian Mole, 'Fortysomething' holds up a funny, painful mirror to middle age and family life. It is also a touching love story about how time and familiarity can lead two middle-aged people astray, and enable them to find their way back to each other.