'TWAT BOYFRIEND' BLOG TO BE PUBLISHED AS BOOK

My Boyfriend is a Twat online blog to be published as a book

An online diary about the ups and downs of living with a 'twat boyfriend' has been snapped up by a book publishers.

Zoe McCarthy, 44, got so fed up of her boyfriend Andy Carling's irritating foibles, she started letting off steam online - after said irksome boyfriend dared her to.

'Andy does the most irritating things all the time,' she laughs, 'and right from the very beginning I just replied, "God, you twat!' I used to get so annoyed. Things like: I'd write out a really long shopping list , we'd go to the supermarket and I'd given him the list before we left home. I'd say, "Right, where's the shopping list?"' and oh, it's on the kitchen table.

'One day, he said to me, "Right, I dare you to start up a blog called My Boyfriend is a Twat". I said "Done! You set it up for me because I know nothing about computers", so he did.'

Four years and a thousand hits a day later, Zoe's wry tales won best European weblog in the Bloggies, the leading blogger awards voted on by the public, for the third year in a row - and, now, have bagged her a £5,000 advance on a book deal with the Friday Project.

Zoe, who is twice divorced and has three children, met Andy, a conservationist, in 2001.

She started writing her blog from her home in Brussels, where she moved 20 years ago, soon after. Entries include following 'The Twat' around clearing up coffee stains and making wry comments about his fashion sense - or lack of it.

Myboyfriendisatwat.com has been described as a mixture of The Osbournes, My Family and Absolutely Fabulous, but Andy is in no way offended. 'In the north of England, you can call someone a twat and sometimes it's offensive, sometimes it isn't. Its certainly eyecatching.