Old, Fat Punks (PRINT)

NO FUTURE. STILL.

Derek, Tim and “Trol” were going to change the world.

There would be revolution. Justice. Freedom. Perhaps even a functioning public transport system.

Then they got old.

Now they are three ageing punks approaching their fifties, nursing cheap pints in one of London’s last surviving punk pubs and swapping increasingly unreliable stories about the glorious battles of their youth. The hair is thinner, the waistlines are thicker and the promised revolution appears to have been cancelled due to lack of interest.

The world they wanted to overthrow has not merely survived—it has become smugger, crueller and considerably better at marketing itself.

Then they watch another pointless riot unfold on television.

Nothing changes. Nobody wins. The same politicians remain in charge, the same grievances are repackaged for tomorrow’s news, and all that righteous fury evaporates into advertising revenue and broken glass.

Something finally snaps.

The three friends decide to make one last grand revolutionary gesture.

They are going to assassinate the Prime Minister.

This is not a sensible plan.

Old, Fat Punks is a blackly comic political novel about ageing, friendship, disillusionment and the peculiar difficulty of remaining rebellious when your knees hurt and you need to be home before the last train.

Part political satire, part crime caper and part howl of impotent fury, it follows three men who have spent decades watching every movement, party and ideology betray its supposed principles. The populist Right offers resentment dressed as patriotism. The respectable Left offers censorship, managerialism and the stern disapproval of people with postgraduate degrees.

Caught between them are three obsolete rebels who still believe that something ought to matter.

They have no money, no organisation, no useful contacts and very little idea what they are doing.

What they do possess is anger, loyalty, several decades of accumulated bitterness and the dangerous conviction that a futile gesture is still better than doing nothing.

Probably.

Expect:

• Ageing punks confronting a world that has moved on without improving.

• Cheap beer, old arguments and unreliable memories of past glory.

• A spectacularly incompetent political conspiracy.

• Social satire aimed in several directions at once.

• Friendship tested by age, failure and criminal idiocy.

• Nihilism, frustration and the stubborn possibility that caring still matters.

• A revolutionary caper conducted by men who really ought to stretch before running.

Old, Fat Punks is for readers who have watched youthful idealism decay into branding, tribalism and social-media performance—and who still cannot quite bring themselves to stop giving a damn.

The revolution may have failed.

The revolutionaries may be tired.

But the pub is still open, and there is time for one last terrible idea.

PRINT EDITION

• Complete novel

• Approximately 334 pages

• Pocket-sized paperback: approximately 108 × 175 mm

• First published in 2015

• ISBN: 978-1-326-40302-7

• Written by James “Grim” Desborough

CONTENT NOTE

Contains strong language, political satire, criminal incompetence, attempted assassination and three middle-aged men making decisions that would concern any responsible healthcare professional.

No serving Prime Ministers were harmed in the writing of this book.