Teetotal hypochondriac hero, Grafton Everest is overweight, indolent, indecisive and gets on badly with most of his fellow academics at tin pot Bowen University. He'd prefer spending most of his time in bed. If things seem bad, they only get worse when Grafton discovers that his old high school teacher recruits graduates for national security work. And with the Free Enterprise World Symposium coming to Bowen he needs Grafton, who suddenly finds himself up to his neck in clandestine operations involving everyone from the Premier down. There's missing nuclear waste somewhere and Bowen campus is awash with radical splinter groups and terrorist cells, all seemingly hell-bent on apocalyptic action. They're nutty enough to give political correctness a bad name.

"The good Doctor, Ross Fitzgerald, has invented a 16-stone, hypochondriac, degenerate creep, Grafton Everest." - Steve J Spears

"Grafton Everest is a wonderful creation whom I would place without question in the ranks of Philip Roth's Portnoy and Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim." - Barry Humphries