A Word from the Authors

Neither of us is quite sure exactly when we started making a note of other people’s conversations, foibles and quips but it began a long time before we met.

The decision to turn our little hobby into a book itself probably started with a conversation with friends. Someone probably laughed out loud or put their hands over their mouth in delighted shock then said something along the lines of “You should write that down.”

So we did. And many were the techniques we employed: eavesdropping, earwigging, a little lurking, nebbing, overhearing and snooping to name but a few. Occasionally little nuggets have been passed down to us by conspiratorial friends, who really should know better.

The result, we discovered, was a kind of kitchen sink snapshot of society caught resolutely off its guard, being real, being funny, occasionally sad - even terrifying. It spans every age, class, and racial divide – a nation united in inanity.

It seems that the richest vault of human comedy and drama is all around us all the time if we just stop, turn off our phones, MP3 players and laptops and listen. It’s a form of entertainment that’s renewable, self-sustaining, and has a low environmental footprint - indeed this book is written using 100% recycled material.

So why not just turn off, tune out and listen in? Who knows what you might be about to hear, and what you might do with it.

Mark Love & Jacqui Saunders are represented by Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann (www.blakefriedmann.co.uk).