The Last Ealing Comedy - Softcover

Baylis, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0701168587 ISBN 13: 9780701168582

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2003

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

'A hotbed of trust and intrigue...Baylis has created a world which intertwines sparky characters from all walks of life.' -- Praise for Stranger Than Fulham - The Face

'A narrative voice that is original enough to get noticed and is pickled in black humour’ -- Daily Mail

'Fantastically funny...this is a modern Ealing classic, crying out to be filmed' -- Kevin Sampson, author of Powder

‘A work rich in humour and insight’ -- Praise for Stranger Than Fulham· Independent on Sunday

‘Fast, funny and funky...Baylis has triumphed’ -- Praise for Stranger Than Fulham· - The Times

From the Author:

I wrote this book partially as a homage to the Ealing comedy films of the forties and fifties. Not that I was around then - but they were always on tv on Sunday afternoons and they had the power, for me, anyway, to dispel the gloom brought about by knowing that tomorrow was Monday, and school, and all manner of other looming horrors. Which brings me to the other reason I wrote this book. I suppose I would say I am fascinated by the way people behave in large institutions - and the weirdest of all these, as well as being the one of which we all have some experience, is school. There can't be many people who haven't got a stock of stories about the absurdity of school - the strange rituals and customs, the mad rules, the curious personalities, some of whom seemed to have devoted their lives to the young at the same time as disliking them intensely.

I think what happens to Alastair in the book taps into a nightmare I used to have -where I found myself at a desk, back at school, about to sit some awful exam. And I would be insisting that this wasn't right, that I was a grown man, I had left school! Alastair thinks he's landed a cushy job, but instead he finds himself more or less back at school, his status little more exalted than if he was a snot-nosed member of the lowest year. I think I'm not the only person to have that nightmare - but hopefully, here, I've managed to get some fun out of it.

Matthew Baylis

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0701168587
• ISBN 13: 9780701168582
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320