A CHASTENED young solicitor diplomatically took the day off work yesterday as scandalised colleagues digested the news that he is the author of an explicit novel about sexual peccadillos in a legal firm.

Paul Wragg, 26, admitted writing Fish Sunday Thinking as a trainee under the nom de plume of Alex Gilmore.

The book tells of sexually obsessed partners promoting female trainees according to the size of their breasts and workaholic young lawyers blowing their pay packets on alcohol. The title reflects the author’s dread of returning to work after the weekend and his questioning of whether he wants to be a big fish in the legal pond.

One scene recounts the story of a bonding weekend on which corporate lawyers retire to the bar and take it in turns to extract a slice of lemon from a trainee’s cleavage with their tongues.

The revelations led to feverish gossip on legal websites about not only the identity of the author, but also whether any of it was based on real events.

The bespectacled Mr Wragg, who studied law at Durham University and York College of Law, was at his home in Coventry yesterday, where he lives with his wife Samantha, and refused to comment.

But, in a change of tune, he now insists that the book was the product of his imagination and an entirely fictional work.

Which is just as well because Hammonds, the international law firm based in Birmingham, where Mr Wragg was a £48,000-a-year trainee, have specialists in all kinds of fields to deal with matters such as these.

Daniella Conte, the firm’s public relations manager, said: “We are making no comment.” Senior sources there hotly deny that allegations in the book refer to them or that their workplace is a hotbed of sexual shenanigans.

Mr Wragg moved to the Birmingham office of Robin Simon last year, where he specialises in employment law. David Simon, the managing partner, denied that his employee was on “gardening leave”. He said: “I have the disadvantage of not having read the book, though I believe it’s quite sensational. Although it’s created a certain amount of interest, he has written this as a private matter.

“He has confirmed to me that he is Mr Gilmore and told me that it is entirely a work of fiction. It is a novel so I interpret it as fiction. He is not in any trouble and just on a day off. The book has come as a complete surprise to me. I am in complete ignorance of the matters he apparently describes in the work.”

Mr Wragg has already made his mark with the Birmingham Law Society, where he had an article published prominently in its February 2005 bulletin.

In it he asked why, in the context of increasing employment claims, more employers have not taken out insurance to protect themselves. “Not a day goes by without the interest of the tabloids being piqued in particular by the accusations of lawyers, accountants, bankers, and the like, against former employers about the scandalous goings on in these publicly perceived high-brow institutions.

“Of perhaps more interest are the large sums of money that appear in these stories of alleged debauchery. You will remember the £7 million sex bias case against . . .”

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