Gagged: (a thriller with jokes) [Paperback]

Richard Asplin's romp through Hollywood is comic and thrilling. I whipped one page over so fast it tore.

Big cast, big characters and jokes-a-plenty, it puts Asplin straight up there with Carl Hiaason and Mr Elton

The hilarious new novel from the acclaimed author of T-Shirt and Genes.

Comic and thrilling, I whipped one page over so fast it tore.

The funny story of hapless TV executive Don Silver who has to find a hit sitcom fast!

Guaranteed giggles set in the wacky world of TV stand-up comedy

Don Silver, the Vice President of Comedy at Mercury Studios, is in very deep trouble indeed. He's been behind so many disastrous pilots that he's earned the nickname 'Buddy Holly'. If he doesn't find a hit sitcom - and fast - it'll be goodbye to the bourbon, broads and BMWs of his Beverly Hills lifestyle and he'll be out on his (freshly irrigated) arse.

Award-winning comedy writer, Melvin Medford, has a plan to help Don out. So he's nerdier than Bill Gates in a Red Dwarf T-shirt at a Terry Pratchett signing; so he hasn't pitched an idea in ages; so his plan borders on the psychotic, no matter, at least he has a plan...

Which is where Ben Busby comes in. A young British comic, simply gagging to break into television, he's just met two Americans who seem very keen on hiring him. Ben's beside himself with excitement.

However, Melvin's beside him with a gun...

In the million-dollar world of the American sitcom, you could die laughing. No joke.

Hello. If you're reading this then you're surfing the net and have come for an e-doggy paddle in my amazon page and I can only begin to guess why. So here goes. You might have read 'T-Shirt And Genes' (It's possible. I understand 40,000 people did). You might have read 'T-Shirt And Genes' and enjoyed it. (Also possible). You mayhap be looking for a gift for a friend or colleague, the office jiffy bag having only come up with seven quids worth of coppers and a paperclip. Or you might be my mother. I don't know. What I can assure you though is that if you've e-breast stroked over here looking for a very funny comedy thriller, packed to the pages with guns, girls and gangsters, featuring a hapless British stand-up comic, his long suffering girlfriend, American sitcom executives and a climactic low-speed golf-cart chase through a Hollywood studio lot, then a couple of mouse clicks on the BUY NOW icon should sort you out. I certainly enjoyed spending 2 years in London and Los Angeles writing it. If you wish to spend a few days reading it, then that'd be lovely. If however you're on this page looking for the paperback of John Craven's bestselling: Newsround - The Scripts Volume 2, then you've clicked the wrong link.

Richard Asplin is the author of T-SHIRT AND GENES. He has had many and various jobs in the past including working as a bookseller. He was, until recently, the Events Organiser for Books Etc. He lives in London. (20021018)

When Jasper Philips pushed open the door of the hotel room, four things struck him as being wrong.

Really, very wrong indeed.

First was the floor. It really didn’t go with the rest of the room at all. From what he had seen of the hotel interior so far, Jasper had expected a fancy carpet. Plush, patterned and so deep he’d have to jump up and down to see what shoes he was wearing.

What Jasper hadn’t expected was paper. A4 typing paper. Hundreds of sheets of it. Some crumpled, some torn in half, some screwed up in tight white balls. It blanketed the room almost entirely, from the doorway where Jasper stood, all the way over to the second unusual aspect of the room, namely the strangled corpse by the bed.

The third thing that struck Jasper was the noise. It sounded like somebody sprinkling cat litter on a Billy Connolly LP going at the wrong speed.

It wasn’t of course. It was Angus Fisher, slumped grotesquely over a laptop computer at the dressing table in the centre of the room. Angus Fisher. One half of The Angus & Malachy Madcap Madhouse – an exhaustingly rubbish variety act he’d shared the bill with at the Edinburgh Festival that summer.

If Jasper remembered correctly, they had gone on after him in front of a disinterested lunchtime crowd and died horribly. Almost as horribly as they had now in fact. Head on the keyboard, bubbles popped and glistened about Angus’s blue lips, cold fingers twitching on a mouse-mat. By the bed, Malachy’s eyes were swollen in purple sockets.

The fourth thing that struck Jasper was an American television producer.

From behind. Unexpectedly, with an aluminium baseball bat.
As the balled up paper floor came roaring up to meet Jasper’s face and the world went a funny colour, Jasper had just enough time to decide that this producer, for all his talk and promises, probably wasn’t going to offer him his own television show after-all.