It's Belfast, 1982, and an eighteen-year-old boy wearing Hai Karate aftershave has a date with destiny. He's a real man now, so he is, and shaving twice a week. Following his successful career as a breadboy, he's going where few people from the upper Shankill have boldly gone before: to university.

He trades the comforts of home for a life of Yellow Pack beans, student digs and late-night intellectual debates on sex, socialism and The Smiths, but this former paperboy doesn't forget his roots, so he doesn't, and he dreams of making a difference in the world by becoming a famous journalist like Woodward or Bernstein – or even Terry Wogan.

But to do that, he'll have to keep his mind off girls (including Bo Derek), pass all his exams, and maybe even finish reading War and Peace ... 

All Growed Up is the sequel to Tony Macaulay's memoirs Paperboy and Breadboy. Touching and funny, it's the book in which the retired paperboy finally grows up.