Amanda's Wedding [Paperback]

90s girl-about-town Mel is adjusting to life without posh-boy Alex, whose attempts to make it big in the music biz have propelled him to the land of the free and Bruce Springsteen. Having omitted to mention his grand tour to Mel however, he has left our heroine a tad disturbed--grounds indeed for taking comfort in the arms of smelly, over-sized accountants with juvenile tendencies. Alex's emotional return coincides with the news that Mel's old "friend" Amanda, social-climber pas excellent (sic), has succeeded in getting herself hitched to Scottish laird Fraser for whom Mel has long harboured feelings of an X-rated nature. Before long, Fraser's brother Angus and Mel's friend Fran--an evil-mouthed, scary, man-hater--join forces in an attempt to rescue the scruffy Scot from the talons of the wannabe "It" girl, whose only interests lie in a double-barrelled aristo title and an ancestral pile.

Amanda's Wedding flies riotously through the pre-nuptial rituals of stag and hen nights and disastrous dinner parties to a staggering, if inevitable, wedding day from hell. Colgan's merciless observations of the London social scene are as witty and sharp as her take on the (extra)ordinary lives of middle-class brunettes from Woking. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" meets "Boys Behaving Badly"--and what is flat-mate Linda's, dark (and milk), cacao-based secret? --Carey Green

A deliciously warm and hilarious romp of a novel set in twenty-something heartland.

Amanda’s old schoolfriends can’t believe it when the social-climbing queen of preen, Satan’s very own PR girl, pulls off the ultimate publicity stunt in getting herself engaged to a Scottish laird. Who cares that Fraser McConnald has worn the same pair of Converse trainers for the last three years and that his castle is a pile of rubble with one calor gas heater – she’ll be titled!

Something Must Be Done. Gentle, decent Fraser is clearly ignorant of her wiles, and Mel and Fran, still smarting from the memory of all the mean things Amanda put them through in their days at Portmount Comprehensive, set out to sabotage this mismatch of the century. So between fighting off the attentions of a love-crazed accountant, keeping Fran’s deadly manoeuvres with the opposite sex under control and trying to win her own war of love with the elusive but gorgeous Alex, Mel finds herself attending a wild Scottish stag night, a hen night from hell, and preparing for a wedding that’s everything you’d wish on your worst enemy.

Ummm.. hello there
I always wondered what happened when you push the 'I am the author' button. And now I know! I think I'll go off and be John Irving now... Thanks very much for buying Amanda's Wedding, or, if you're only browsing and thinking about it... go on. It'll cheer you up, I promise. It's daft and it's got a good song about bestiality in it, and who can ask for more for £4.79?

I am currently in the process of trying to build a website (badly)... so try going there if you want to see a preview of the new book, 'Talking to Addison' which is coming out in September, about how all the nice rich men these days work in computing, and therefore if you want one of these smart young men, you're going to have to put up with an awful lot of crap about Star Trek. It'll also have reading dates and stuff, plus photographs, if I can get my stupid digital camera to work, which I CAN'T.

Feel free to say whatever you want about the book here- after a newspaper said I looked like Gail from Coronation Street, nothing can ever hurt me again!

Very warm wishes, and once again, thank you,

Jenny Colgan.

Jenny Colgan is Scottish born and bred, but currently lives and works in London, where, for the last few years, she has worked as a stand up comedienne in Notting Hill and the West End, writing her own material.

The party was in an exclusive club on the Thames: all noisy gravel and ginormous bouquets of unnatural-looking yellow flowers clustered around a bunch of braying men and sharp-lipsticked women. Everyone was taller than me and knew everyone else, and before I was two steps through the door, my carefully groomed confidence started to plummet, until once again I was Melanie Pepper, unruly loudmouth of 2C, worrying about puppy fat and what would happen if George Michael didn't want to marry me after all. (Well, who knew?)
This was definitely not my race, this mob of anorexic, complacent, poshtastic freeloaders. I caught sight of myself in the enormous gold-tinted mirror opposite, surrounded by the glitterprati. I looked like I was wearing my mother's shoes, en route to the dentist.
I turned round for the consolation of having the handsomest man in the room on my arm. But my heart sank again. How could I forget? Alex's hair flopped! He went skiing! His parents couldn't remember his first name! He was One of Them! Even before I had grabbed my first free glass of champers (Don't grab, Mel! You have a right to be here, remember?), he was practically being mobbed.
'Al! Al, darling! Where have you been?'
'Alex! Sara said she bumped into you in LA - had a few fantastic days, I hear?'
'Oh, come over and see Benedict and Claire - we haven't seen you since the pool party!'
I too had been at the pool party, having a thoroughly miserable time. I too hadn't seen any of these poncey poseurs since then. I pretended to look politely interested and waited for Alex to re-introduce me.
'Guys, you remember Melanie, don't you?'
A blonde horse glanced at me cursorily, and I wished - for God's sake! - that my name was a little less common.
There was a short pause in the conversation as they gave me simpering nob smiles and enquiring looks, then they fell back into loud guffaws as Alex recounted his adventures yet again, cast me one apologetic glance, then hurled himself into dissecting the rugby season and knocking back the 'poo.
So much for the grey silk dress. The entire circle, defying the laws of physics, appeared to have its back to me, and I felt out in the cold. Deflated, I wondered what had happened to my fantasy big night at Amanda's party. I would have made my excuses and left, but there was no one to give my excuses to. So I wandered off, pretending to be in search of a toilet, and wondering whether or not to go and have a little cry by myself.
Weighing up my options, I spotted Amanda. After all, she was the hostess, she had to talk to me! I wandered up to her group in my best 'I'm not at all desperate to talk to anyone at this party, ha!' manner.
'Hello, darling!' air-kissed Amanda. For once, her shallowness was pitched at precisely the right level for me, and I was extremely grateful for it. She was wearing a Barbie doll-sized dress made of some pastel, girlie, lacy thing that was almost, but not quite, see-through. 'That's flaunting it a bit when you're meant to be celebrating your union with someone you'll love for the rest of your life,' I thought nastily as a waiter did a full body-swerve trying to make out her nipples - but I decided not to mention it.
'Ehmm ... are you having a nice party?' A stunning social opener from me.
'Darling, it's fantastic! There's a Hello! photographer here.'
There was social success, and there was social success.
Amanda was looking even tinier and more cutesy than ever. Her sly little features glowed in the gold of the room as she checked her reflection again in the mirrors and - I swear to God - simpered at herself.
'Ho!' I said heartily. 'Maybe he'd like to photograph me and Alex, back from the grave!'
This was meant to be a weak joke, but as I would so patently never be Hello! magazine material, it just came out as a bit sad.
'So, tell me all about it!' pouted the minuscule radiant one, while doing a quick scan of the room to make sure no one could see her talking to me.
I did start to try and explain, but other people's happy love lives are so unbelievably boring - we shagged, we stared deep into one another's eyes and, hey, we had this really funny private joke whereby we turned the pillowcase into a singing animal - and Amanda hid her boredom less than most. It also didn't help that the other half of this indivisible team was guffawing his head off, miles away. I found my voice trailing off into a litany of hmm, so, it's great, yeah, fine. Then there was a bit of a pause. My shoulder was being looked over. I knew I should have paid my homage and left by now, but I could hear big roars of laughter from Alex's clique - laughter I simply could not share (I was tending towards the melodramatic by this stage) - and my options remained either clinging desperately to Amanda like a limpet or bursting into tears in the toilet.
'So,' I stalled, 'where's Fraser?'
'Hullo thair,' lilted the Scottish tones behind me. I turned round, with the only genuine smile of pleasure I'd felt all evening. He must have remembered me after all.
'Frase!'
Despite the kilt, however, this character wasn't Fraser. He wasn't even looking at me - he was looking at Amanda, who returned a rather icy stare. I felt a complete fool.
'Angus,' pronounced Amanda beautifully, 'have you met my old schoolfriend, Melanie? Melanie, this is Fraser's baby brother.'
I looked at him like a surprised fish.
'Hullo there,' he said again.
A rather ruddy-faced boy stared back at me. He was as tall as Fraser, but didn't share any of his features. His hair was reddy-brown, and he had freckles. Hmm.
'Hello,' I said casually. 'Are you the best man?'
Whoops. Patently not the thing to ask. Ongas, or whatever his name was, blushed to the roots of his - almost ginger in this light, really - hair and mumbled, 'Ehm, well, I don't think so ... erm, no.' Amanda looked cross. 'Well, we had to make all these decisions for the church and so on!' This was so meaningless I took the point and didn't enquire further. Amanda had, however, managed to say this in transit and had already made her exit, leaving us with 'Unpopular at Parties' syndrome. We both knew we were the leftovers, so we certainly didn't want to be speaking to each other, but we didn't have anyone else to talk to.
'So, what do you do, Angus?' Jesus, I sounded like the Queen.
'I'm a mechanical engineer.'
'Oh, like your brother?'
'Ehm, no, it's a bit more boring than that.'
As if in cruel mockery, this remark was punctuated by yet another enormous laugh from Alex's group, who were obviously having the best time any one group of people had ever had, in any place, ever. Someone had a napkin tied on as a blindfold, I noticed.
Another long pause. Every fibre of my being screeched for Fran to mince in, or for Alex to run up declaring, 'I'm so sorry to have been parted from you, my darling. God, these awful bores, they just won't leave me alone. Come, let me ravish you in the gazebo, you amazing raunch-puppet.' Maybe then I could find out what a gazebo was.
'So, did you come down from Scotland?' This remark was pointless before it came out of my mouth, judging from the kilt. Actually, I was dying to ask why he and the lovely Fraser clearly didn't get on, and why they had fallen out, but looking at his face as he failed to hide his disbelief at the idiocy of my remark, I decided against it.
'Yes. Yes, I did.'
We dabbled, excruciatingly, in the myriad available modes of transport from Scotland to London, before lapsing, once more, into an uncompanionable silence. Finally, I decided that Tears in Toilet beat this hands down and, preparing to make my exit, I laid down my last small-talk tool:
'So, what do you think about your big brother and little 'manda then?'
Suddenly he faced me full on and, for the first time, managed to look cold and cross without going red. His eyes were a very bright blue. Out of nowhere he said, 'I think he's being a twat. And I'm sorry, but I think your friend is a witch. Excuse me.'
I really looked at him then. So much for party chitchat.
'Care to elaborate?' I asked, in what I hoped was a casually wry manner, and not the kind of thing middle-aged women said when their husbands announced they were having an affair.
'She treats our mother like a skivvy, she treats Fraser like dirt, she treats that bloody title like a cure for cancer, and she wants to re-do the old place like some fucking King's Road bam-pot house. So, I apologize, but I'm not quite in the mood to meet her pals. Excuse me.'
And with that he stomped off, deserting me! Bloody hell, what a pig.
Secretly, I was quite impressed. It was kind of true. Amanda was a witch. Fraser was being a twat. But even so! There was I, trying to be nice to the poor bloke, who obviously didn't know anyone. He'd hardly needed to be so rude as to march off at the first opportunity. He could have at least waited for me to do so first. I stared after him, then examined the chandelier very hard in case anyone thought I was staring at someone who'd just walked away from me as opposed to doing some hearty chandelier-spotting.
Well, at least there were deliciously expensive hors d'oeuvres. I stuffed my face and wished I'd brought a magazine - I could almost enjoy myself.