The Last Ealing Comedy - Tapa blanda

It's time for Alastair Strange to move on, Martha's left him in the lurch and discovered more to life than the TV and late night pizzas, and things at TV Forum magazine just aren't all they were cracked up to be...But, when you've got friends like Tara, and her rich husband, anything is possible, even teaching, just as long as you get the right reference. Alastair lands a job as a teacher at an Ealing boys' school and is set the task of enlightening teenage boys to the wonders of media and film; it doesn't seem like too tough a challenge but the 'ferals' in 4L shouldn't be underestimated. On the school grounds are the derelict Ealing Studios; the themes, as with the soap operas in Stranger Than Fulham, enhance Baylis's comic novel, combining the wit and fun of the films with the catastrophes of modern urban life. Living with the gregarious Davenport, dealing with mysterious girls on the bus and disastrous blind dates, it would seem that there is, perhaps, one last comedy left in Ealing.

Matthew Baylis was born in Nottingham in 1971 and educated in Liverpool and Cambridge. After working as a literary agent, he went on to write storylines for BBC l's 'EastEnders', and then to help the United Nations and British Council create the first pan-East African soap opera (scheduled for transmission in July 2002). He has written for a number of newspapers, including the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Independent on Sunday and Evening Standard. He also reviews fiction for the website Amazon.co.uk. His first novel, Stranger Than Fulham, was published in 1999.