Charles Pemberton has lived his whole life in the same small town: he went to the best local school, he lived in one of the finest houses and his parents were, effectively, middle-class aristocracy. His quiet life of privileged contentment might well have continued undisturbed, were it not for the arrival of Clark 'Large' Rossiter ... In this uncharismatic town, Large is the biggest personality, equally capable of magnetic charm and all-consuming wrath; he terrorizes the old guard and shakes up the established hierarchy in his relentless pursuit of money, status and, eventually, revenge. Filled with Binding's typical perspicacity, but leavened with a refreshing wit, this is England: greedy, flabby and vulnerable. Through the lives of Charles and Large, Binding chronicles the vertiginous period from Thatcher to Blair - years all the more prescient for their similarity to the current boom and bust. "The Champion" is literary satire at its savage best.