SIMON RUMLEY - The Wobble Club

To diet or to die; that is the question.

Gill and Brolly live happily together off South London’s Walworth Road. She works in a local hardware store; he runs his own online business. They share a content, happy existence, unremarkable except for one thing; their excessive food intake. Unable to take public transport or walk more than a few metres, they rely on mobility scooters and their friend Rob, a taxi driver with an unusual fetish, to help them live the life they want: an orgy of takeaways, fast food and non-stop snacking. After witnessing their best friend, the morbidly obese Tiny Tim, eat himself to death, Brolly decides he and Gill should lose weight before suffering the same fate – but Gill refuses. After some soul-searching, he starts dieting alone and in secret and sets off a series of unpredictable events that will change both of their lives forever. This debut novel from agent provocateur and cult-film director Simon Rumley veers from the humorous to the bathetic, from the grotesque to the bizarre, from the outrageous to the intimate. Invoking the spirits of Martin Amis and Stephen King, The Wobble Club is a unique, thought-provoking and unforgettable debut which investigates society’s final taboo: whether people should be allowed to do what they want with their bodies.

According to the House of Commons Library statistics published earlier this year, almost 3/4s of people aged between 45 and 74 in the UK are obese. Set in and around London’s Old Kent Road, The Wobble Club is a deliciously dark investigation into our troublesome relationship with food and how it affects our minds, bodies and lives.