The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes is a classic of literature, truncated to Don Quixote for maximum linguistic impact.

Doner Kebab Quixote is a different matter entirely. One written by a tabloid journalist by the name of Derek McLadculture.

Published in 1995 during the peak of lads’ mag culture in the UK, the now erotic thriller always came with a voucher for a free doner kebab at one’s local fast food establishment. Oi oi!

The Laddism Journey of Doner Kebab Quixote

“Hunger is the best sauce in the world.”

The idea for Doner Kebab Quixote was to take Don Quixote and make is appealing for the lads’ mag generation of readers as possible. The original is over 1,000 pages. For the lads’ mag generation, a sprightly 150 pages covers a lot of ground of laddism wahey. Including:

• Beer
• Yelling
• Belching
• Hot babes
• Kebabs
• Hangovers

Derek McLadculture said the idea came to him:

“On a massive piss up. I thought to myself, lads don’t like reading and for good reason. Only sad bastards read books! My mates who don’t read are all thick as shit and staggering ignoramuses, what’s wrong with that? So, I’ll write a book for guys what don’t read and it’ll be proper belting.”

Many lines of prose are ripped straight from Cervantes’ work, primarily as they were in keeping with the casually sexist views of the time. Although “wahey” is sprinkled in liberally to spice up the language of yesteryear.

“What man can pretend to know the riddle of a woman’s mind? WAHEY!”

But also lots and lots of references to one specific type of fast food, a regular post drunken night out food of choice for patriotic Brits.

“A doner kebab is much more to be prized than a diamond.”

On and on the work goes about this popular foodstuff, detailing Donny (not Don) on his adventurous nights out getting wasted and pulling birds. The novel ends with a punch up outside a kebab house and Donny spends a night in the cells for his argy-bargy antics.

Awaking the next day with a nasty hangover, he finds himself covered in puke and with a pounding headache… and yet… he yearns once more for a doner kebab (profound laddish ending if ever there was one).

Recipe for Disaster: Whatever Happened to the Free Kebabs With the Book?

A curiosity in history is the fate of the doner kebabs provided with copies of the book in 1995. The publisher (now defunct) of the work, Fast Food Publishing Ltd., provided an ambitious 135,000 print first edition run of the work.

At a book launch in a London pub called The Oi Oi, author Derek McLadculture was on hand to sign books, drink beer, belch, and chat shit about women. He told the BBC, present for the launch:

“*BELCH* ‘scuse me. I may have what had ten or something beers, but this is the best book ever. No needs to be humble! Here, mate, have a kebab…”

McLadculture was arrested soon after for trying to force a kebab down a posh BBC journalist’s mouth. Once in jail, police discovered he had 135 unpaid parking tickets, too, and had also robbed 17 banks in a previous life. Thus, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with 1% chance of parole in 2035.

As for the kebabs at the book launch—32% were eaten. The rest were piled into a great big doner kebab pile and bulldozed into a giant ditch in Watford.