Takin' Over the Asylum (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Adapted for the stage aby the author, Takin' Over the Asylum is a hilarious, updated and profoundly moving adaptation of Donna Franceschild's Bafta-winning BBC TV-series. Set in a Scottish mental institution, the play reveals hope and joy in the fragile beauty of the human heart. When Ready Eddie McKenna, Soul Survivor and double glazing salesman, arrives to reinvigorate St Jude's defunct hospital radio station he turns more than the ramshackle station upside down. The whisky drinking would-be DJ meets the 19-year-old bipolar Campbell, schizophrenic electronic genius Fergus, OCD Rosalie and the elusive self-harming Francine. Fighting against illness and perception Eddie and the patients of St Jude's strive for their dreams to be accepted.