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Peaches: Soho Sex Shop
Paperback
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ISBN13: 9798188371258
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 21 2026
Pages: 412
Weight: 1.21
Height: 0.84 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 21 2026
Pages: 412
Weight: 1.21
Height: 0.84 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
INTRODUCTION
I never set out to write a love letter to a sex shop.
I set out, if I'm honest, to write something funny - a farce, a bit of nonsense, a way of poking fun at the peculiar collision of respectability and ridiculousness that defines a certain kind of London street. Soho, in my mind, has always been exactly that kind of place: a neighbourhood that has never once apologised for what it is, and has been all the richer, all the stranger, and all the more alive for it.
I never set out to write a love letter to a sex shop.
I set out, if I'm honest, to write something funny - a farce, a bit of nonsense, a way of poking fun at the peculiar collision of respectability and ridiculousness that defines a certain kind of London street. Soho, in my mind, has always been exactly that kind of place: a neighbourhood that has never once apologised for what it is, and has been all the richer, all the stranger, and all the more alive for it.
But somewhere around the third chapter - somewhere around the moment poor Malik Khan found himself tied to a chair in Mayfair, waiting for a woman who never came back - the book stopped being simply a comedy and started being something else. It became a story about family: the ones we're born into, the ones we choose, and the strange, sprawling, entirely accidental ones we build for ourselves out of whoever happens to walk through the door on a given Tuesday morning.
Every character in these pages is invented. Malik, Waheed, Bella, Lola, Donna, Joey, Janus, and the rest of the Peaches family exist nowhere but on this page and, I hope, somewhere in your imagination once you've finished reading. But the spirit of the thing - the chaos, the warmth, the improbable dignity of people who refuse to be embarrassed by who they are - is drawn from every high street I've ever loved: the ones with the dodgy wiring and the terrible parking and the shopkeepers who somehow know your name, your usual order, and exactly which jokes will make you laugh on your worst day.
This book asks you to laugh, first and always. There is a fuse box that explodes within the first hour. There is a talking doll that will not stop greeting people in Mandarin. There is a man who spends an entire evening tied to a chair while a painter and decorator wanders in by mistake. If none of that raises at least a smile, I'm afraid the rest of it won't either, and you have my full permission to put the book down here.
But underneath the jokes, if you'll indulge me, is something I happen to believe rather sincerely: that the best businesses, like the best families, are never really built on a plan. They're built on turning up, on treating people properly, on surviving the disasters together and laughing about them afterward, and on refusing, decade after decade, to let a little humiliation curdle into bitterness.
Today Soho. Tomorrow, whatever you like.
I hope you enjoy the mess.
With warmth, and a healthy respect for good electricians everywhere,
Every character in these pages is invented. Malik, Waheed, Bella, Lola, Donna, Joey, Janus, and the rest of the Peaches family exist nowhere but on this page and, I hope, somewhere in your imagination once you've finished reading. But the spirit of the thing - the chaos, the warmth, the improbable dignity of people who refuse to be embarrassed by who they are - is drawn from every high street I've ever loved: the ones with the dodgy wiring and the terrible parking and the shopkeepers who somehow know your name, your usual order, and exactly which jokes will make you laugh on your worst day.
This book asks you to laugh, first and always. There is a fuse box that explodes within the first hour. There is a talking doll that will not stop greeting people in Mandarin. There is a man who spends an entire evening tied to a chair while a painter and decorator wanders in by mistake. If none of that raises at least a smile, I'm afraid the rest of it won't either, and you have my full permission to put the book down here.
But underneath the jokes, if you'll indulge me, is something I happen to believe rather sincerely: that the best businesses, like the best families, are never really built on a plan. They're built on turning up, on treating people properly, on surviving the disasters together and laughing about them afterward, and on refusing, decade after decade, to let a little humiliation curdle into bitterness.
Today Soho. Tomorrow, whatever you like.
I hope you enjoy the mess.
With warmth, and a healthy respect for good electricians everywhere,
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