LONDON IRISH

Half-Irish and half-Scots, Bic runs a moderately-successful stall selling crepes in Greenwich market in the shadow of the Millennium dome (which is news to his father who thinks he's dragging his heels a bit over his botany degree). He's a decent enough fellow, quite organized really, with his own set of rules - although he has, he is the first to admit, broken most of them. Well, for starters, he spends far too much time in the pub - and then there's that one about not sleeping with another older (and with a predilection towards extreme violence) man's wife...And Bic's dream, while not topping the charts in the ambition stakes, is decent enough: to meet the right girl, return to Ulster, settle down and start Northern Ireland's first ostrich farm. But things haven't been going too well recently: there was the flat below his which burnt to a cinder leaving its incumbent (deceased) melted to the loo seat; then a fellow stall-holder (now also deceased) seems to have hit the deck (literally) of the nearby 'Cutty Sark' in suspicious circumstances and now Chris Smith (yes, that Chris Smith - the esteemed Culture Secretary at the time) has gone and run over Bic's beloved dog while super-vising the arrangements for London's world-beating Millinnial celebrations.

But then a silver lining - or rather a mysterious, somewhat elusive raven-haired lining - appears in the guise of Roisin. Not only has she taken over the stall opposite Bic's, but she's also from the mother-country, heart-stoppingly beautiful and, as far as Bic can tell and if you don't count her somewhat over-protective brothers, single. OK, so while wedding bells might still be a little way off, Bic felt things were looking up - until, that is, the morning he woke to find not only did he have blinder of a hangover but he was also now BRITAIN'S MOST WANTED MAN and on the run, with Roisin as his hostage and 43 murders to his name.