No one in Star Wars ever pops to the toilet, for example, and no one in any of Jane Austen’s work ever gets an itch on their back they can’t reach. But I reckon the reason why I enjoyed this book was because it actually felt like a slice of authentic life,even down to the smallest mundane details.

When you lived on… well, it wasn’t Stanhope Road, but that did make us laugh every time we went past Stanhope Street. and “no cheese tonight” – the BBC soundcheck version “girl over there with the hot pants on” and our first sighting of “that bloke who tries to sell you felt tip pens”. In his decrepit flat where he can’t even manage to cook spaghetti hoops without setting off the communal smoke alarm, his lifeline is the telephone. Ultimately My Legendary Girlfriend is pulp fiction for the Pulp generation, an old-fashioned morality tale dressed up as an enjoyable romp that should appeal to lovers of Men Behaving Badly and anyone who has suffered the ignominy of having a Sting song quoted at them to justify a break-up. So I’ve always gone out with girls who aren’t interested in music, and so people always asked me about my legendary girlfriend, because they’d never seen me with her.I was also born in Birmingham — in my humble opinion the greatest city in the world with the nicest people too. In some ways it is nice to read a male perspective when it comes to love although I don’t think many men would admit to ever behaving like a love sick teen like Will does through out. My Legendary Girlfriend by Mike Gayle was a bit melancholy in places but there is also lots to brighten it up and make the reader smile. Mike became a full time novelist in 1997 following the publication of his Sunday Times top ten bestseller My Legendary Girlfriend, which was hailed by The Independent as ‘Full of belly laughs and painfully acute observations,’ and by The Times as ‘A funny, frank account of a hopeless romantic. We're with him through the various stages of angst and wondering, but somehow the read is comforting and even funny.

There hasn't been a woman since who has come and knocked ol' Aggi down from that tremendously high pedestal Will has put her on. Thank you to Alainna at Hodder Books for offering the Squadpod the opportunity to take part in this PR Campaign and for my copy of the book. In 2021, Mike was the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association. But yet there’s something about him that is still engaging, making you keep reading and not quite give up on him, even if you’re shouting at him in your head the whole time. We both knew who Pulp were – if not exactly very much about them – as despite not having attracted a great deal of attention on its release the previous September, My Legendary Girlfriend had made Number Thirty One in the NME‘s Singles Of The Year for 1991, leading to a flurry of excitement amongst aspirant indie kids asking each other if anyone knew what this record with the brilliant title actually was.First we tried filming something in the room of the East End pub where the great train robbery was planned (don’t ask why). The best part of all must be Jarvis’s vocal – ironic as there are very little in the way of fixed lyrics here. He is also very self centred and everything has to revolve around him and what he is going through rather than his friends. Over the three years of its existence we interviewed many bands and artists including: Smashing Pumpkins, The Cranberries, Pavement, Bill Hicks and Blur. Look, we’ve all had that relationship that’s hard to get over, where you were sure they were The One, but they didn’t agree and ripped your heart out, but to be this obsessed after three years seemed quite ridiculous.