Wordplay 2005 star Christopher Brookmyre has won the seventh Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with his novel All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye. The announcement was made at the Guardian Hay Festival on Sunday 4th June by Everyman publisher, David Campbell.

Christopher Brookmyre’s novel was published to great critical acclaim – The Times saying, “Brookmyre is funny, electric and captivating”. The judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize agreed, describing his book as “madcap, whacky and possessing enormous confidence”.

Christopher Brookmyre, 37 and from Glasgow, wins a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and forty six volumes of the magnificent Everyman Wodehouse. He will also have the unusual honour of having a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, bred on the hills above Hay-on-Wye, named after his triumphant novel.

As if this wasn’t enough for one year, Brookmyre has this week agreed to trek back north in September to take part once again in Shetland Arts Wordplay 2006 book festival. “We just wanted Christopher Brookmyre back,” says Shetland Arts Literature Development Officer Alex Cluness. “So many folk commented last year that they would love to have heard more from him and over the year fans have asked repeatedly if we could bring him back – if only to hear more from the unpublished work he read last year. That’s his new book now, A Tale Etched In Blood And Hard Black Pencil. The Wodehouse Prize is just the last straw – we had to beg him to come back. I’m not sure if he’ll be bringing his new pig though.”

At Wordplay 2006, Christopher Brookmyre will not only read from his work, published and unpublished, but he will also be taking fans’ questions and discussing his work and the inspirations behind the novels.

Shetland Arts Wordplay 2006 festival will take place 8-10 September, in the Clickimin Leisure Complex, Lerwick.

Further Information from

Alex Cluness
Literature Development Officer
Shetland Arts
Pitt Lane
Lerwick
ZE1 0DW
t. 01595 694001
alex.cluness@shetland-arts-trust.co.uk