Goodnight Steve McQueen [Paperback]

'A warm and funny debut by a proper writer' - Mirror; 'A sweet, optimistic tale' - Scotsman; 'Compelling first novel' - She; 'An engaging tale' - Sunday Express; 'This is high-class bloke lit written by a woman...it's funny and tawdry, and Wener has a lovely way with words' - Telegraph

'If you liked HIGH FIDELITY, you'll love GOODNIGHT STEVE MCQUEEN' (The Times )

'Compelling first novel' (She )

'An entertaining tale on how far to follow your dreams' (Mirror )

'Entertaining' - The Times

'She knows how men talk' (Telegraph ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'She knows how men talk' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'If you liked HIGH FIDELITY, you'll love GOODNIGHT STEVE MCQUEEN' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Danny McQueen's day job in the local specialist video shop is only a way to pay the rent until the current incarnation of his band makes it big. Danny's been coasting along like this for years, and sees no reason to change. Until his girlfriend Alison is offered a job in Bruges and issues Danny with an ultimatum: he has six months to get a recording contract, get a proper job, or get a new girlfriend. Suddenly Danny needs to decide where his heart really lies.

Louise Wener was born and raised in Ilford, East London. In the mid nineties, after years of singing into hair brushes and working in dead end jobs, she found fame as lead singer with the pop band Sleeper and went on to record three top ten albums and eight top forty singles. Having realised her twin ambitions of meeting Richard and Judy and appearing on Top of the Pops she decided it was time for a change of direction. Goodnight Steve McQueen is her first novel.

Do you remember the quiz show Winner Takes All? It had a top prize of one thousand pounds. They kept it in a Perspex display case. A thousand crisp green notes. Right there. Right under your nose, and it was real money as well, not like those cheques they wave about on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.

I can’t remember anyone winning it, though. Not ever. Most of the contestants seemed happy with fifty quid and a slap on the back from Liza Tarbuck’s dad: a weekend for two in Blackpool if they were lucky. And you knew it would rain the whole time they were there. And you knew Peter from Wilmslow was secretly gay so he’d have to take Beryl his arthritic nan instead of Rita his imaginary wife. And you knew he wouldn’t be able to go backstage and have his picture taken with the Nolan Sisters after all, because he’d have to be back at the Grand Palace B&B before the ten o ’clock curfew.

Thanks, Tarby. Thanks very much.

I mean, what a con. Talk about massaging the truth. It should have been called Loser Takes All .It should have been called No-Hope-Rubbish-Hair-Crap-Job-No-Prospects-Lousy-Boyfriend-Loser Takes All.

I can’t help thinking I would have done rather well.

My name is Steve McQueen and I’m a very bitter man. What on earth were they thinking of, calling me Steve? Didn’t they realise it would ruin me? Didn’t they know I’d be tortured? Didn’t they understand it would be impossible for me to live up to? Did they hell. It was my mum ’s fault, of course, she was obsessed with him. The only reason she married my dad in the first place was because of the name. It didn’t matter that he was a geography teacher. It didn’t matter that he was bald at the age of eighteen, fat at the age of twenty-two and dead at the age of thirty-three and a half. Mum had what she’d always wanted. She’d married herself a genuine McQueen.

I was three years old when my father died – he had a heart attack on a field trip to an ox-bow lake – and for a long time I actually thought Steve McQueen was my real dad. I remember my mum sitting me down to watch The Towering Inferno when I was five – spooning down my second helping of Heinz spaghetti hoops – and feeling really proud. We both clapped at the end. What a guy. He’d even managed to save Fred Astaire and the cat. What a guy. What a dad.

There were pictures of him all over the house. Steve driving his Porsche 917 from Le Mans ,Steve flying through the air in his 1968 Mustang from Bullitt, Steve being chased by Nazis in The Great Escape ,and a giant scrapbook filled with press cuttings that she kept in a bruised leather suitcase under her bed.
‘Who ’s this?’ I said, flicking through her scrapbook one afternoon. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Ali McGraw,the lady out of Love Story .’
‘What ’s Love Story?’
‘Oh, it’s so sad. Oh, I don’t think I can talk about it. Not without crying.’
And off she went, off to fetch a hankie from the dressing-table drawer, and all I could think was, Why is Dad doing that? What is Dad doing kissing Ali McGraw?

I suppose things were OK to begin with. I was a great-looking child. I looked like the Milky Bar Kid only cuter: white blond hair, wire-rimmed spectacles and the cheekiest, wide-mouthed, gap-toothed grin you’ve ever seen.
She was dead proud of me. I could tell she thought there was hope: that I might grow up to be a movie star or a Formula 1 driver or a teenage multimillionaire, and for a few precious years (apart from finding out that my dad was a dead geography teacher instead of an A-list Hollywood star)
I was blissfully happy.

I brought home crayon drawings of racing cars and Mum stuck them on the fridge next to her collection of Steve McQueen quotes. I built models of doomed Apollo rockets out of corn flake packets and Mum put them on the sideboard next to her picture of Steve McQueen’s house: 27 Oakmont Drive, Brentwood, California – we knew the address by heart.
I collected model motorcycles,built planes out of balsa wood and elastic bands, and I even went to martial arts classes on account of my namesake being a third-dan black belt in karate. I was rather good at it. I won the club’s under-tens trophy in 1979. It was a great year. The same year I won a Blue Peter badge for my papier-maché Shep.

And then it all went wrong. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.