ADRIAN MOLE AND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

In this episode of the Mole Chronicles, we find Adrian, now 34, a staunch supporter of Tony Blair and the Iraq war, up to his eyeballs in debt, and slowly strangling under the passive-aggressive ministrations of Marigold Flower, who is determined to marry him. His parents are living in a tent while converting a piggery, and the swans in the pond outside his rat-infested loft apartment are relentlessly violent. Paul Daintry sounds exactly as one would expect of Adrian Mole as he fills his diary with ineptitude and ordinariness. Daintry's performance keeps Mole infuriating and outrageously funny. Only the lengthy pauses between date and entry are annoying in Sue Townsend's otherwise delicious send-up of a self-involved, unintentionally hilarious subject of the British Empire. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 06]