Books for sale. Photo by Kris Cohen

Despite statutes forbidding trial by ordeal, the High Court continues to be subjected to a plagiarism case between the authors of a very dull and batty book and the author of another dull and batty book. Embarrassingly the books are both from the same publishing house, forcing the publishers to endure columns and columns of free publicity for two books which would otherwise be flagging in sales.

“It’s dreadful” said a worker for the very dull publisher, “We were hoping that a forthcoming film, due out in a couple of months, was going to be too boring to promote the books. Now we have mentions in the press across the world attracting interest in the books and the film. The inflow of cash is going to cause a major headache for our accountancy department.”

One of the very dull authors concurred. “We had hoped our book would sink into obscurity. The whole point of the case was that we didn’t want people to see how tedious our book was. The royalty cheques are, frankly, embarrassing.”

Tony Keen has an different view.