1991: After a chance meeting on a train, novelist, Michael Pearce is commissioned to write the family history of the powerful, wealthy and ruthless Winshaw family.

But whenever he feels stressed, Pearce turns again and again to view a clip of his favourite film, What A Carve Up!

Robert Bathurst stars in Jonathan Coe's wickedly funny, black comedy, inspired by the immorality, greed, corruption and ambition of 1980s Britain - adapted by David Nobbs (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin).

Coe's cult 1994 fictional novel was inspired after he watched the old British comedy horror film, What A Carve Up! (1961) starring Sid James, Kenneth Connor and Shirley Eaton. Coe opted to borrow both the film's title and the theme of a family -- as a way of exposing foul play in the British Establishment - and the excesses and evils of all aspects of Thatcherite Britain during the 80s and early 90s.

Michael ...... Robert Bathurst
Fiona ...... Fiona Allen
Hortensia/Tabitha ...... Flaminia Cinque
Mortimer ...... Charlie Higson
Alice ...... Lucy Punch
Pyles ...... Jeff Rawle
Michael's Mum ...... Geraldine McNulty
Lawrence/Waiter ...... Gus Brown

Producer: Lucy Armitage

Made by Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC Radio 4 and first broadcast in 2005. Show less