Novelist Julian up for comedy award Ð despite pig stealing!

Novelist Julian Gough, a well-known figure in Galway’s arts scene for 20, years has achieved yet more literary acknowledgement.

Julian has been shortlisted for the 13th Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction along with Sir Terry Pratchett and Sue Townsend. This is his second time making the shortlist – after attracting his fair share of controversy the first time out!

The award is named after the English writer PG Wodehouse, who is best known for his Jeeves and Wooster series, and it is given to the book which best captures the "comic spirit" of Mr Wodehouse.

The award comes in the form of a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, which is named after the winning title.

By Katie Finnegan

Julian’s book, entitled Jude in London focuses on a penniless Irish orphan, fighting blizzards, bankers and the laws of physics as he walks the length of England. He has not one, but two quests: to find his true love – who was last glimpsed in the hairy clutches of a monkey – and to uncover the secret of his origins.

This year Julian Gough is up against some of the UK’s top writers. Terry Prachett has been nominated for his 39th Discworld novel Snuff; Sue Townsend (of Adrian Mole fame) is up for The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year; John O'Farrell is nominated for The Man Who Forgot His Wife; and John Lanchester is up for Capital.

“It’s great to be up with people who I would have grown up reading,” said Julian who found out he had been shortlisted for the award when he went on Twitter just after midnight last Thursday and spotted his name on the list.

“I’m delighted to have been shortlisted, although very surprised. My surprise at being on the shortlist comes from the fact that, last time I was on it, I disgraced myself so thoroughly that I'd assumed the judges were more likely to put me on a blacklist than a second shortlist,” said Julian.

Julian was nominated for the Wodehouse award in 2008 for Jude Level 1. However the eventual winner, novelist Will Self was named prematurely in the Hay Literary Festival Brochure only days after the shortlist was announced. Julian concluded the competition was pre-determined.

“What, I thought, would Wodehouse have done, faced with such provocation? Sat in his room and written another comic novel, probably. Action was called for. So I asked myself, what would PG Wodehouse's greatest creation Bertie Wooster do? And the answer came to me as in a vision – as though the ghost of Wodehouse himself whispered in my ear – he would steal the pig,” said Julian, and that’s exactly what he did. In a move reminiscent of another great Wodehouse character, Lord Emsworth – a fanatic pig breeder – Julian became a ‘pignapper’.

“I made my way to the Welsh borders and, with the assistance of my trusty gentleman’s gentleman, I stole Will Self's pig.