Legs manual wins odd title prize

The manual places emphasis on the importance of lower limbs

A self-help guide called If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs has been voted the oddest book title of the year.

The book beat off competition from I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen to win The Bookseller magazine's prize.

Cheese Problems Solved took third place in a poll which attracted 8,500 votes.

Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said of the winner: "So effective is the title that you don't even need to read the book itself."

SELECTION OF PAST WINNERS The Joy of Chickens American Bottom Archaeology Versailles: The View From Sweden Re-using Old Graves Highlights in the History of Concrete The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

He added that it "makes redundant an entire genre of self-help tomes".

The manual, whose author is named Big Boom, is described as a "self-help book, written by a man for the benefit of women".

Bookseller's contest began in 1978, and the roll-call of previous winners includes High Performance Stiffened Structures, Living with Crazy Buttocks and How To Avoid Huge Ships.