Essex Drugs and Rock'n'Roll
A novel by Jonathan Durden

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MARK COHEN is a forty-year-old family man, with all of the designer evidence to pass any Essex surface-wealth audit. He returns home one evening after a foreign trip to discover that maggots overrun his house; his wife is close to death and that his daughter has been admitted to intensive care after a failed suicide attempt. Sitting silently on his lounge carpet he selfishly asks himself a single question: “If I were to die this very night, for what reasons would I come back and haunt this world?” All fear of consequences now lost, Mark writes a list of the reasons and embarks upon an incredible journey to explore them.

In one amazing year, Mark Cohen gets to discover how good life can be – loads of mind-blowing sex, more cocaine than an ad industry awards event, global recognition as well as just bad life can get – addiction, adultery, betrayal, and workplace disgrace. From the loyalty of long-term friendships, the agony of always wanting your best friend’s wife to the thinly disguised record of media madness and excess, Jonathan Durden has written the naughtiest mid-life crisis black comedy for the noughties: an Essex boy’s Rake’s Progress from South Woodford to Shoreditch.

About the Author

Despite his success as a media mogul, Jonathan is best known as a contestant in Big Brother 8, forced to leave the house due to the death of his 104-year-old grandmother. Due to unfortunate tabloid interest in his personal life, Jonathan has shunned all red top interest in his experiences to focus on writing novels and developing TV projects.

In 1986 he became joint media director of a top ten advertising agency, WCRS, and wrote his first series of media columns for The Daily Telegraph in 1988. In 1990 he co-founded Pattison Horswell Durden (PHD), a pioneering media agency. By 2006, when Jonathan became its president, PHD had become a global network operating in 41 countries and boasting an annual turnover of $8 billion. He has worked with hundreds of clients including BT, O2, BBC and Warner Brothers.

In 2006/7 he wrote a fortnightly media page for The Guardian and trade title Media Week. He is a partner of advertising agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy and a founder of Good TV, a television/ film production company in partnership with four established film directors whose previous credits include Poirot, Miss Marple and Blackadder. A production of Essex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll is in planning.