In a blatant jibe at Aunty, the Independent recently ran a piece on people’s least favourite books. As one who is always ready to criticise and incredibly slow to praise it was right up my street.
Where do I start? Well, Lord of the Toss obviously. I read the first hundred or so pages of the first volume and then put it down.
It is fair to say that I didn’t so much back away from the book as run like the wind. It was awful.
Now, I’ve been known to read the odd book every now and then, but I don’t count myself as at all knowledgeable in literary matters. I always seem to skip right past the Penguin masters and into the popular fiction shelves at any bookshop. But as a wise man once said "I know what I like and Lord of the Rings is poop". Anyway I am glad to see that I’m in such exalted company as John Mortimer, who should daily be thanked for bringing us Rumpole of the Bailey.
Just round off this particular round of invective, the duck is currently running a best/worst movie competition. My submission is, of course, The Nutty Professor II – a movie so bad it defies description.