Desperate for a Thumbs-Up

At last, Ginny Fox has finished her rewrite of Borlando and rushes it off to her friend and confidante, Vera Sackcloth-Vest, for appraisal. Meanwhile, DH Lollipop has just completed a rewrite of Lady Hattersley's Plover and is nervously awaiting the critical verdict of Lionel Fox.

Never have two literary giants been so eager to have their geniuses confirmed, but self-doubt plagues their every waking hour.

Due to a series of unfortunate coincidences, involving Lionel's inability to remember addresses and Vera's obsession with creating a new Blue Garden at Sizzlinghust, which involves her sending off for hundreds of new plants by mail order and storing them in Gosling's shed, the manuscripts go missing.

What the writers interpret as a literary thumbs-down from their readers is nothing more than misdirected-mail. Friendships are strained to breaking point, while Ginny and Vera try to guess what the other is thinking and Mrs Gosling burns DH Lollipop's filthy manuscript when she accidentally comes across it and reads it from cover to cover.

Producer: Jamie Rix
A Little Brother production for BBC Radio 4.