'Wolf Hall', Hilary Mantel's lacklustre book about the life of some dead guy with no supernatural powers whatsoever, has been declared the winner of the 2009 Man Booker prize, earning its author a £50,000 prize and the likelihood of a huge increase in the number of copies on the shelves of charity shops in almost mint condition.
"This year the judges faced a really difficult choice," said James Naughtie, some bloke off the radio who doesn't play songs, who chaired the panel. "J.K. Rowling was too busy this year sorting her banknote collection into serial-number order to write any great literature, so we were faced with a load of non-magical rubbish thrown together by people whom nobody has ever heard of. I mean, does this 'J.M. Coetzee' even exist? I find it hard to believe."
"It didn't help that not one of these so-called books was worth making into an exciting family film, so we had to read them," he explained. "We took it in turns reading out a paragraph at a time, until we all fell asleep."
"Good job we found some thimbles," added little James, brightly. "Else we'd have ended up rubbing our fingertips down to the bone. Eurrgh! Skeleton fingers!"
Despite its misleading title, Mantel's 650-page doorstop contains no tragic figures doomed to transform into bloodthirsty animals under a full moon. Instead, it tells of the rise of one Thomas Cromwell, who overcomes his tragic lack of latent magical abilities to become the most trusted adviser to some big fat king by the name of Henry Vill, whose credibility is seriously undermined by his unimaginative failure to appoint a court wizard.
Mantel's tedious book ends in a big barney with the villainous Pope, who is the only remotely interesting character in the whole sorry saga as he unsuccessfully attempts to convince the king that he has mystical powers granted by an invisible fairy.
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