The shortlist for the funniest fiction prize of the year, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, was announced on Wednesday 12 April. Six titles are in contention for the top spot.

Helen Fielding, previously shortlisted in 2014 with Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, is joined by Carl Hiaasen, James Robertson, Richard Russo, Nina Stibbe and Simon Wroe.

The 2017 shortlist was chosen, with the aid of a glass or two of Bollinger La Grande Année, at the world famous family run house of Champagne Bollinger in Ay, France, by the panel of judges:

Broadcaster and author James Naughtie; Everyman’s Library publisher David Campbell, and a Vice President of the Hay Festival and Director of National Trust Wales, Justin Albert.

The six shortlisted novels are:

• Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries by Helen Fielding (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
• Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen (Sphere, Little, Brown Book Group)
• To Be Continued… by James Robertson (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House)
• Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo (Allen & Unwin, Atlantic Books)
• Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe (Viking, Penguin Random House)
• Here Comes Trouble by Simon Wroe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Books)

As is customary, this year’s winner will be announced just ahead of the Hay Festival. The winner will receive a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and the complete set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection. The winner will also be presented with a locally-bred Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, which will be named after the winning novel in a special celebration involving further champagne.