Alan Coren is now, sadly, "the late, great, Alan Coren": adjectivally beatified and much missed. This book brings together a well-chosen and quiveringly funny sample of his comic writing; from early satires, through articles for Punch, to the long-running Times columns and dispatches from his beloved Cricklewood. Coren knew his Shakespeare too well to believe that brevity had much to do with wit. (If you want to know why, just take a look at the great Hemingway parodies here.) The humour in these columns isn't about one-liners and the best pieces take a fertile idea and run a mile with it, sparking a shower of bons mots in the process; whether it be Idi Amin's chat-show, an Ian Fleming-style riff on a story about retired spies or the Beckettian horrors of the 3am baby feed.