Buying the Programme Book One of the Small Wars Trilogy

Ron Jessop is a thief, a fraudster, a black marketeer and he may be a drug smuggler as well, his wife is an evil scheming Chinese prostitute, his true love is a Yorkshire dressmaker and his best friends are hired killers. And he’s the kind and sympathetic hero of Buying the Programme. Ron is fixated on the idea of providing a good life for his beloved mother while his father is away during WWII and after his father’s death on D Day, he works hard to try an establish himself as a businessman and we watch as he tries and tries again to realise his dream and is thwarted time and time again. We follow him from Yorkshire to Malaya in the 1950s after he is called-up for the Army, then onto Germany, into military prison and out to Yorkshire again, then Aden, Borneo and the mean streets of Ulster in the 1970s. It is Ron’s indomitable spirit that keeps him getting up after each knock down and keeps him heading towards his dream of wealth and ease for his Mam.