“I was in Hastings when I saw what looked like a tumbleweed bouncing across a zebra crossing,” recalls Young. He even appeared as a gallows poet in the film Plunkett and Macleane.But, as Young admits, he has been struggling with writer’s block “I was having trouble writing anything at all. For a long time, I got by with just one new poem – ‘To a Scrotum’ – a celebration of this rarely mentioned part of the male anatomy. He has also been a regular at the Edinburgh Festival, gigged for the United Nations and toured with the musician Julian Cope and the poet Attila the Stockbroker.

Murray Lachlan Young prefers to dwell on the ridiculous aspects of life That’s just as well. In 1997, he was catapulted to fame on signing a £1m recording deal with EMI – unheard of for a poet. Just as suddenly, and with a first album in the can, the team working on the project was sacked. No public explanation was given, and EMI refused to sell the album back to Young.

He was told to take the money and run.
He bought a house in East Sussex with his wife, Zoe, and lay low as sales of his first book, Casual Sex and Other Verse, edged above 20,000. Now, at 35, he’s back in full satirical flow for a three-week stint at the Old Red Lion, in London. But what has he been doing for the past five years? Well, there were occasional performances – he was commissioned by Mark Rylance, artistic director at the Globe, to write a prologue to the stage adaptation of Lucius Apuleius’ mock-epic Latin novel The Golden Ass, and a poem commemorating the theatre’s relocation to its current home. There are lots of books here I would be really happy to see get more public attention.”The long-listMonica Ali Brick LaneMargaret Atwood Oryx and CrakeRupa Bajwa The Sari ShopStevie Davies Kith and KinStella Duffy The State of HappinessMaggie Gee The FloodSarah Hall The Electric MichelangeloShirley Hazzard The Great FireZo?eller Notes on a ScandalJhumpa Lahiri The NamesakeDinah Lee K?A Visit from VoltaireAndrea Levy Small IslandJoan London GilgameshSarah May The InternationalsToni Morrison LoveChimamanda Ngozi Adichie Purple HibiscusAudrey Niffenegger The Time Traveler’s WifeGillian Slovo Ice RoadRose Tremain The ColourAnne Tyler The Amateur Marriage. He said: “Last year’s winner, Property, by Valerie Martin, had slipped through the net, but it has gone on to be a big success in paperback. All first works of fiction – including novels, short story collections and novellas – will be eligible for the £10,000 Orange Award for New Writers. It will be possible to enter books for the principal Orange Prize and the New Writers award.Kate Mosse, the writer who co-founded the prize, said: “We hope that this exciting new award will help promote and celebrate the work of novelists and short story writers at the beginning of their careers.”Martin Higgs, the literary editor of Waterstone’s, said the Orange Prize had done a good job of picking out books that some of the more well-known prizes had overlooked.