Author Another Nobody has been named 2009 Unheard Of Brooker Prize winner for her historical novel 'More Unoriginal Potboiling Tripe'.
The novel, set in the predictable Let's Hope Dumb Yanks Will Turn This Tripe Into A Movie era, features Henry the Eighth, Jane Seymour and Sir Thomas Cromwell, and Julia Robertes and Sean Penny-Farthing and Hitleria Clinton. In it Nobody successfully describes how the 1500s in England were such a difficult period in history, mainly because Unheard Of prizes had yet to be invented for struggling authors, who would otherwise never sell a single book.
'I felt strongly identified with, you know, that time', Ms. Nobody said, 'Chaucer had wrote his stuff and Shakespeare and Phil Marlowe was just round the corner, sort of, then Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and even George Orwell would follow. So by 2009 unheard of nobodies had run out of anyfink to write about, like, so some bright spark invented Unheard Of prizes. Luckily for me, and for last year's winner, Jane Boil-de-Pot.'
This is Another Nobody's fifth novel, her previous ones being 'Yet Another Wimmin's Stuff Book', 'Oh Heathcliff, Pass Me Another Mills And Boone Plotline', 'Only Women Write And Buy Such Unbelievable Dross As This', and 'Lace, Cleavage, Horses and Hollywood'. 'It's a whole industry', publisher Miles O'Boilin said, 'formula tripe for Americans who, well, actually believe such books are historical.'
'When they're about as historically accurate as 'Carry On' films. Of course a Brooker prize means an instant Hollywood movie deal, so those idiots there can turn such ghastly bilge into a ghastly film, probably starring Renee Zella-O'Theta Pumkinkowski and that English bloke with the posh accent.'
Shortlisted for the Unheard Of Brooker prize were also James O'Nheardov, Sarah McWho, Lady Jane Seymour Galsworthy-Forsyte, Heather Mills-Boon-McMarvellous, Mtoken Mbabwe, and the world famous Writer Formerly Known As Jane Austen.
'Yeah, Jane was a bit of an influence on me stuff', Ms. Nobody said, 'and me next novelleta will be called 'Lucky Austen Et Al's Copyright Has Run Out', a novel novel about a woman struggling to lift all her ideas from 1700s English costume drama sort of books, tha knaws, and entering 'em into Unheard Of prizes fingies, and winning 'em.'
''Oh darling', I swooned,' she read from the first page of her prizewinning book, 'my cambric kerchief fluttering to the floor like a falling fluttery thing. 'Why have thee done me such wrong? Dist thou not know thy and thine black pudding were past its sell-by date? And tell Cromwell to hurry up and get a grandson for me next bit of pot-boiling tripe. And get kettle on, King Charles, and mek us some cha, I'm garsping for a cuppa.''
'My publishers, Straightto Charity Shops & Nat, will then pay Brooker's to give it lots of publicity, and it's orf to California for the summer on zee proceeeds, ya ken. Did you know Americans actually believe Henry the Eighth had six wives? Larf, I nearly chopped Ben Eltyawn's head off!'
Next month English publishers Batmann & Robbyne are launching their own prize for novelists, the Is It Boiling Yet? Prize. This will be awarded for what the judges believe to be the most ridiculously unoriginal idea for a book, so will attract entries full of fainting ladies in corsets, power-hungry noblemen, swords, muskets and daggers, lots and lots of horses, dumb but well-meaning rustic idiots, lakes, rivers and fields and large country houses, and, of course, a King/Queen/Lord/Lady and a disastrous marriage and secret love affair.
The Brooker Prize. Guaranteed potboiling tripe you've read a thousand times before.
