Monday January 3, 2000

So how do I greet the New Millennium? In despair. I'm a single parent, I live with my mother . . . I have a bald spot the size of a jaffa cake on the back of my head . . . I can't go on like this, drifting into early middle-age. I need a Life Plan . . .

The 'same age as Jesus when he died', Adrian Mole has become a martyr: a single-father bringing up two young boys in an uncaring world. With the ever-unattainable Pandora pursuing her ambition to become Labour's first female PM; his over-achieving half-brother Brett sponging off him; and literary success ever-elusive, Adrian tries to make ends meet and find a purpose.

But little does he realise that his own modest life is about to come to the attention of those charged with policing The War Against Terror . . .