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Ad Lib takes the plunge for James' plumbing diaries
Ad Lib has signed Pipe Dreams: The Secret Diaries of a Neighbourhood Plumber by the pseudonymous Nicholas James.
Duncan Proudfoot, editorial director, acquired world all-language rights from Robert Smith at Robert Smith Literary Agency. The book will be published on 2nd March 2023.
Pipe Dreams gives James’ "plumber’s-eye view of life in a series of eye-opening, amusing and nerve-racking beneath the kitchen sink dramas". The publisher continued: "We follow the ’secret plumber’ as he plunges into people’s homes, observing and diagnosing problems, both personal and plumbing-related and providing solutions to domestic dilemmas."
It has been pitched as James Herriot’s It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet (Pan) meets Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) and Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected (Penguin).
Proudfoot commented: "In his 20-plus years as a plumber, Nick has met some truly extraordinary people. In his wonderful stories, he brings them vividly to life in this peek behind the big city’s many, different closed doors. Amusing and horrifying by turns."
James added: "Plumbing provided me with access to lots of different types of people from every section of society. I got to see how they lived, and while I was fixing their plumbing problems or building them a bathroom, I was also listening, trying to understand what really made them tick, so that one day I could use them as the basis for a character in one of my books. The only problem was I never had any time to write. During lockdown it occurred to me that the funny, nail-biting plumbing stories that I’d been telling to family and friends for years might actually be the basis for a book, so I wrote them all down and Pipe Dreams is the result."
