"Ooh, you've noticed my medals," giggled Mrs Baldry.

Oliver blushed and averted his eyes from the stripes on his patient's bum and focused on the muscle knot at T5. He felt ashamed. Andrea, his wife, had only been dead a week and he was already having sexual fantasies about someone else. We may have had our difficulties, but our 17-year age gap never really got between us, he thought.

"You're all a bunch of fucking tosshers," slurred Barry, as he drank 10 bottles of vodka after the funeral. It had been bad enough losing his wife to a younger man all those years ago, but to an osteopath? "I'm off to finish my fucking column."

"Perhaps, you'd like to come to my men's group on Tuesday," said Oliver.

As if, thought Barry. What would an old hack want with that?

"Hello, Barry," said Sophie, the well-connected socialite. "Have you got my rent? Thought not, so I'd like you to move out of the Tite Street flat for a while."

"Bugger," drooled Barry over 25 pints. "I'll have to get Oliver out of his house. It was once half mine after all."

"Nice of you to come to the group," gushed Oliver. "You're all a bunch of fucking poofters," said Barry, several gallons later. "I'm off."

Oliver heard a noise in the garden. "Oh, help. Barry's had a heart attack," he shrieked. "You'd better come and stay with me," he added once Barry had got the all-clear from the hospital.

"Who are you?" asked Oliver when he went to Barry's flat to get his clothes.

"I'm Carla." Oliver felt a lump in his trousers. "Er... would you like to go out with me?" "Sure. Why not?"

"You've fallen for Carla, haven't you?" laughed Barry. "She's a call-girl. Too expensive for you."

"Wah, wah," wailed Oliver. "Why am I such a wetty that I misread every social situation?"

The phone rang. "I've lost my weekly column," Barry said quietly. "Maybe it's time I stopped drinking heavily and started treating people a little better."

"You can have the house, Barry," said Oliver. "I'm going to live in your flat."

Sophie took Oliver under her wing and introduced him to her expensive friends. Within days he had become an osteopath to many and a shag to some. Suddenly he was brimming with self-confidence. Life was good.

And if you really are pressed: The digested read, digested: Oliver and Barry plod their way through 184 pages of mind-numbing self-discovery