'How to Be a Public Author' by Francis Plug

Francis Plug is the fictional alter ego of New Zealand ex-pat Paul Ewen. Until he wins the Booker Prize for the book he is writing, the alcoholic Plug works as a gardener for a wealthy banker, and attends author events with Booker Prize-winning authors to get some pointers on how celebrity authors behave and to get them to inscribe their books to him. Ewen attended all the actual events, which are hilariously and astutely reported, and the actual inscriptions to Plug are displayed in the book (a complete set of living Booker winners, up to and including Eleanor Catton) along with the conversations between ‘FP’ and the authors. Frequently Plug’s idiotic and disruptive drink-fuelled behaviour at the events veers off into fiction but it is not always clear just a what point this departure is made. As he ploughs his nose deeper into the berm of his extra-literary life, the puerile Plug becomes a surprisingly sympathetic character, a sort of pathetic everyman, sharpening the satire of literary success which makes this book so compelling as well as actually making me laugh quite frequently.
>> Francis Plug crashes the 2014 Man Booker short list.
>> Interview with Paul Ewen
>> Do you remember the actual-celebrity-nabbing fictional character Norman Gunston?