Like the great Jesus Christ himself, I had a lot of shit on my mind when I hit 33 ...

I had three new-born future Ireland internationals to feed, a daughter in need of psychiatric evaluation and a teenage son obsessed with uncovering the shameful secrets of our family's 1916 past.

Throw into the mix a sister missing in Orgentina, a wife struggling to lose the weight from her orse and an interfering father-in-law living under my roof.

You can see why, like the Son of God, my life had become a major hassle.

And just when I thought it couldn't get any more difficult, a moment of madness involving - what else? - the opposite sex persuaded Sorcha that I needed to have the unkindest cut of all.

Seedless in Seattle is the fifteenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series. Ross books - annual No 1 best-sellers - have sold over half a million copies, are annually nominated for the Popular Fiction prize at the Irish Book Awards - where they have won the prize an unprecedented three times - and are also critically acclaimed as satirical masterpieces.