with the steadily reliable and just a little dull Ed. As their marital paths get ever nearer, the question is: how on earth will Honey cope with this life- altering dilemma and which way will she swing when faced with a choice?
Amy Jenkins’ path to publication has followed that of many a debut author around whom a deafening buzz has developed. The submission ofjust one chapter was enough to convince Hodder & Stoughton that she was worth taking a chance on. To the tune of a £600,000 two-book deal. Is it possible that the wealth of her writing swayed this move or could it be that she is able to trade on the back of a triumphant past?
‘By definition, hype is a bad thing,‘ Jenkins admits. ‘The connotation of the word is that it is somehow concerned with something that is unworthy of being hyped. But it’s not a negative thing if the product that is being promoted is worth the hypef
The distance in quality between This Life and Honeymoon is wide
hasn’t exactly been setting the small screen alight, but i he did, somewhat l bizarrely, pop up in Harry 1 Enfie/d’s Yule Log Chums a while ago. Slightly more impressively, he’s soon to be seen in forthcoming , low budget British film, House!. A comedy about bingo (yeah, really), Hughes stars alongside Kelly Macdonald as an ambitious bingo caller. Success Rating 2/5. Being one of Harry Enfield’s ’chums' doesn't really cut it, but fingers crossed for his embryonic film career.
Egg.
Name Andrew Lincoln. in a pub. Character Lovably soft, footie-mad non-lawyer
After This Life Hasn’t really been kicking small
We've waited a while for the next This Life and then two come along at once. Metropolis (above top) stars James Fox, Louise Lombard and James Purefoy as a collection of Leeds postgraduates moving on to live out their entangled lives in London (Scottish, Mon 1 May, 10.05pm). Hearts And Bones (above bottom) stars Hugo Speer, Dervla Kirwan and Amanda Holden as a collection of Coventry friends moving on to live out their entangled lives in London (BBC1, Sun 30 Apr, 9.50pm). What are the chances of that happening. eh?
AMY JENKINS
enough to accommodate the world’s supply of chalk and cheese; perhaps the only connection you could make are the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll attitudes of the hateful assemblage of characters. Through these spiteful individuals, Honeymoon wants to be an analysis of the cynical way we deal with love in these terribly cynical times. ‘The idea in the book is that it’s considered embarrassing to be straightforwardly romantic these days,’ insists Jenkins.
This idea lasts the time it takes to get your teeth into chapter one and you find yourself with a bunch of women quaffing champers through Soho in a limo which will undoubtedly be sprayed at some point with hen-night vomit. And then it all gets a bit embarrassing. Any budding writer out there who fancies themselves as the next Marian Keyes or Helen Fielding, do three things. Stop. Think. And then do something else. Please.
Honeymoon is published by Hodder & Stoughton on Thu 4 May priced £16.99 hardback/£10 paperback.
screen ass, though he did sleepwalk his way through j The Woman In White
; alongside the equally
E soporific Tara Fitzgerald and he takes the lead role in the forthcoming murder mystery, A Likeness In
; Stone. He also had a small part in clubbing movie Human Traffic, where he
‘ basically got the piss taken : out of him by John Simm
Name Amita Dhiri.
Character Prim and proper, overly-bathed, boring lawyer Milly. 5 After This Life Probably
Success Rating 2/5. Bit
i parts in Britflicks do not a star make. Probably too
3 nice to ever be properly
i famous.
the least busy of all the main players since the series folded, Amita has appeared in Macbeth, McCal/um and Da/zie/ & Pascoe, for heaven’s sake. Most interestingly, probably, she could be spied gamefully struggling through the faintly ridiculous, post- apocalyptic nonsense of The Last Train.
Success Rating 1/5. Not looking too clever for Amita, although she did survive a holocaust in The Last Train, so at least she's a trooper.
27 Apr-ll May 2000 THE U919