Pistache

"pistache, pis-tash n a friendly spoof or parody of another's work. Deriv uncertain. Possibly a cross between pastiche and p**stake. No good writer is beyond parody; that is his tragedy. Few of the bad ones are, either; and that is theirs. From James Joyce's best man's speech to Thomas Hardy's football report, Samuel Beckett's monologue for Ronnie Corbett and John Updike's cookery book - the work of the great and the not-so-great is here sent up with little hope of coming down. Most of these pieces began their life on Radio Four's The Write Stuff, but have been retooled for the printed page. Others, such as Martin Amis's first day at Hogwarts, have been written specially for this book. Philip Larkin's Lines in Celebration of the Queen Mother's 115th Birthday, first banned, then cut by the BBC, appears in its entirety for the first time. This is not a book for the faint-hearted or the deferential. It is a book for the bedside table of someone you would like to sleep with."