Gail Lockwood and her Imaginary Agony Aunt

For fifty-something Gail Lockwood the new millennium starts with redundancy. Her to-do list reads, 'Get a job. Pay off the suite. Do roots and nails. Get a man and get laid.' Not easy when her boss, the flamboyant Bradley Jones, has jetted off to Spain, and the job centre has nothing for a woman whose only qualification is a Brownie badge.

Unemployed and firmly sandwiched between her eccentric mother and her problem daughter, a single mother who always seems to need last minute babysitting,...