The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 is the BBC RADIO 4 Book at Bedtime pick . . . Celebrate Adrian Mole's 50th Birthday with this new edition of the fifth book in his diaries, where Adrian faces divorce, fatherhood and (short-lived) television stardom Wednesday August 13th Here I am again - in my old bedroom. Older, wiser, but with less hair, unfortunately. The atmosphere in this house is very bad. The dog looks permanently exhausted. Every time the phone rings my mother snatches it up as though a kidnapper were on the line. Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked ('the sausage on my plate could have been a turd') and celebrated (will he be the nation's first celebrity offal chef?). And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is too busy as the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch to notice him. Frustrated, disappointed and undersexed, Adrian despairs until a letter from his past changes everything . . . 'With the Mole books, Townsend has an unrivalled claim to be this country's foremost practising comic novelist' Mail on Sunday 'Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation. Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself' The Times 'One of the greatest comic creations. I can't remember a more relentlessly funny book' Daily Mirror 'Three cheers for Mole's chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family. We need him' Evening Standard 'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran - from Amzon