A good-looking, sex-addicted reporter employed by a tacky disaster news channel becomes the stuff of his own style of journalism when his hand is bitten off by a lion in India. Back home in New York, the journalist, a bland man who attracts women effortlessly through his passive charm becomes very famous. Among the many crazies out there is a woman determined to donate her husband's hand to help the journalist out. There's a catch - the donor is still alive.

Among life's many enduring mysteries is Irving's literary reputation which has always dwarfed his minor talent - never more so than in this made-for-television sex romp.

True Irving is having fun satirising the hypocrisy and opportunism of junk journalism, but even by the chaotic standards of tasteless comedy, this takes some beating.

The wife who wants to give her husband's hand is quickly granted her wish when her husband accidentally kills himself. His hand is then presented to a neurotic hand surgeon whose sanity has always been suspect, more so since his wife left him.

Dr Zajac's story is funnyish although Irving, whose feel for characterisation seldom goes deeper than caricature, quickly loses interest. The dead man's wife wants her husband's hand to star in the transplant - but insists on visiting rights. On meeting the famous reporter she exacts her price - frenzied sex because she and her now dead husband had longed for a baby.

Irving's irritatingly knowing prose, tired comic devices, the obnoxious characters, the haphazard story and the truly weird romance in which the donor's mad widow becomes an idealised love object, all contribute to this silly yarn being noteworthy mainly for being daft enough to ensure even Robin Williams might decline the script.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times