Day of the Chav (Jackson & Rogers) Shirley Basingstoke Teen writer, Shirley Basingstoke, turns her hand to sci-fi in this light-hearted coming of age novella. The story centres on a boy called Pork who is fat and stupid. He’s also a hideous chav. Pork and his friends spend most of their time sitting on a wall, grunting menacingly at passers-by. Occasionally Pork tries to shoplift Maccy D’s, but, of course, he is caught every time. In another early scene, Pork challenges a stray dog to a fist-fight to impress his mates, and ends up chasing it for four miles. The full extent of his stupidity, however, isn’t revealed until the gang foolishly decide to enter a pub-quiz. When asked the date of the Crimean War, Pork insists that it happened last week. Knowing no better, his gang write it down – and later beat him up. The quiz also reveals Pork’s erroneous assumptions regarding yoghurt, Duran Duran, and the concept of door-frames. As his best mate, Neville, says: “Pork, you is thick as fucking moss”. After painting this endearing and realistic portrait of a young, troubled teenager, Basingstoke then sets about redeeming Pork through a series of events that suggests that even the lowliest chav may one day make something of themselves. Firstly, the world is visited by aliens. Secondly, it turns out that these aliens are hyper-evolved ‘ratio-beings’, who have achieved a sort of inter-dimensional existence due to their extreme cleverness. This has enabled them to travel enormous distances through space in ships made out of hexagonal soul-tissue. After the American military has launched its customary and futile war with the aliens, mankind decides to make contact with them – and discovers that they are actually peaceful, friendly creatures. As a sign of goodwill the aliens fix the ozone layer and treat humanity to a spectacular interplanetary laser-show. Then they land in Algeria and sample some of the local cuisine. After a week of cordial diplomatic talks, the Algerian government realise that the Aliens have come to Earth with a very specific purpose. Their race is dying, and mankind holds the key to their survival. On a live global broadcast the aliens explain that they are only so intelligent because they conducted mind-euthanasia for several millennia, rooting out the most dim-witted of their species and burying them alive in huge sub-space graves. This ruthless strategy led to a massive increase in scientific aptitude, and almost doubled their daily innovation rate. For many centuries the aliens enjoyed a golden age of technological achievement, inventing everything from telekinetic quantum-turbines to self-replicating nova-modules. Then, gradually, they realised that the lack of stupidity in their culture was having an adverse affect on their societal make-up. With no one to laugh at or feel superior to the very foundations of the alien’s civilisation was collapsing. They had become an artificial and lop-sided species, doomed to extinction unless their clever-to-thick ratio could be re-equilibrised. This is their purpose on earth: to find an idiot and fertilise themselves with their stupidity-genes. This news is met by a worldwide campaign to find the dumbest human. The wastes of Siberia are scoured for backward peasants; the towns of Texas are combed for defective red-necks; and the capital of Ireland (Dublin) hosts an ironically self-deprecating stupidity-contest. A Willy Wonka-style mania grips the planet, and suddenly everyone starts pretending to be much more ignorant than they really are. All the worst schools in Britain send their biggest dullard to Algeria, and Pork is chosen as the delegate for Croydon Comprehensive. Finally the day of reckoning arrives, and the aliens hold a mammoth exam for the 34,000 assembled fools. Pork, as expected, goes through to the next round and is absorbed into the interior of the alien’s ship. He and four other contestants of politically-correct nationality then undergo three trials to ascertain who is the thickest of them all. The first is a rudimentary peg-and-hole challenge which stumps all but the French contender. Then comes a self-identification test which Pork only gets wrong because he says his name is Pork, when really it is William Granger. The American and the African give their correct names, leaving only Pork and an Eskimo called Digro in the final round. As it turns out, Digro is a six-year-old feral child who had hitherto been living with a family of seals. Plus, he’s also sustained a massive head injury. Even so, Pork is the stupider. The final trial consists of a simple physics question about the levels of gestalt-energy produced by an electromagnetic graviton pile-up. Digro emulates a walrus and inadvertently gets the question right – or at least close enough to disqualify him. Pork’s unthinking grunt, on the other hand, wins the competition and makes him an instant global superstar. The aliens then stick tubes in his ears and siphon out his brain which they use to impregnate scores of incubation-pods, thus creating a future generation of incredibly dense aliens. While all this is going on, the author works in a romantic theme involving Pork’s mate Neville and an alien princess. This soppy subplot, however, adds little to the story other than a didactic warning about the dangers of unprotected sex. It’s clear that Basingstoke intends this book to be an inspiration to teenagers, but in reality her underdog-does-good message will probably not reach the audience it is aimed at. Inevitably, those that would most identify with the characters in this book are too thick to be able to even read it.