The Cheesy Microphone

Sebastian Whitmore has spent years preparing for a career in television. Unfortunately, television has had no time to prepare for Sebastian Whitmore.

Newly recruited by WBN Television, Sebastian is qualified, enthusiastic and determined to prove that he belongs in front of a camera.

His first day does not go entirely to plan.

He arrives at 3:27 in the morning, gets his watch caught inside his new boss's jacket and, before lunchtime, manages to knock the station's principal newsreader off his chair with a microphone.

Twice.

It should probably end his career.

Instead, Sebastian is given one more chance.

And beneath the spectacular accidents, questionable improvisations and growing collection of colleagues who have learned to approach him with caution, something unexpected begins to emerge: Sebastian is actually rather good at his job.

Now he only has to survive live television long enough to prove it.

From celebrity interviews and outside broadcasts to family life with his wonderfully unimpressed wife Clara and their children, Oliver and Lucy, Sebastian discovers that becoming a television reporter is considerably easier than remaining one.

Especially when a missing microphone cover, an old black sock and an unfortunate smell become involved.

The Cheesy Microphone is a warm British comic novel about family, ambition, embarrassment and the extraordinary amount of trouble one perfectly decent man can cause while genuinely trying to help.

Some people were born for television. Sebastian Whitmore appears to have been sent to test it.