Charlie Big Potatoes - Tapa blanda

Male fiction in a new guise - cool yet sensitive, funny but serious, moving and unforgettable. Remember Phil Robinson, he's the writer FHM readers have been waiting for . . . Charlie Marshall is not a man who should be getting married. But it's too late. When he arrives wasted at his own wedding, the consequences of his drunken life land on him like a ton of falling wedding cake. He slips into unconsciousness as the ceremony begins leaving behind a distraught bride, her despairing nouveaux riche parents and 150 portions of uneaten salmon. Wracked with guilt, Charlie soon realizes that opting out of wedded bliss was a mistake of monster proportion and hits an all-time low when he's pulled - drunk, desperate and pleading - from his would-be-in-laws' ornamental duck pond. Rehab seems the only sensible solution but with drink and drugs denied him, Charlie rapidly has to face the fact that life isn't all rock 'n' roll: his parents' marriage is disintegrating, his job is on the skids and his friends appear to be wooing his ex. Can he gather his scattered wits, fake a quick recovery and get through rehab before his cheque bounces and his liver disintegrates? And more importantly can he grow up and get the girl without losing his cool? CHARLIE BIG POTATOES is a bittersweet delight, loaded with a vicious seam of dark humour that proves even if big boys don't cry, they can make life bloody difficult at times.

Phil Robinson is the former deputy editor of Loaded. He lives in London with his wife, Anna Maxted. Charlie Big Potatoes is his first novel.