Geoff Norcott Makes Us Laugh

We've been approached by a film company which wants to buy the rights to Wasting Police Time and Perverting The Course Of Justice. Apparently, they're attracted by the 'verité' in the works. We'll let you know how it all pans out.
Talking of buying rights, we're ourselves trying to secure three books by one of our favourite social commentators (more details as and when) and are also buying the rights to a popular science title published by Penguin in the States. Small publishers like Monday have to think long and hard about shelling out for rights, but while there is an upfront cost you do save a lot of time on the editing process. At our level, publishing mostly first-time authors, editing is a serious drain; even the journalists we've published (Chris Hughes and Colin Freeman) have found there's a huge difference between knocking out 1,000 words for a paper and putting together a 90,000 word book.
Finally, by way of ostriching ourselves in these slightly depressing times, the senior management of Monday Books took themselves off to Jongleurs in Leicester on Friday night. Years ago, we were regulars at the Comedy Store and the original Jongleurs; to this day, we've never seen anyone to beat Sean Lock (Bill Bailey and, in his day, Bob Mills were up there) but on Friday we saw Geoff Norcott for the first time. Absolutely hilarious. And he likes cricket.
If you're finding the prospect of Gordon Brown being praised for saving the economy a bit much to take - like an arsonist being praised for turning the hose on the house he's just burned down - you could do worse than find out where Geoff is next on and getting tickets.