But it’s in the quieter moments of Flake where Dooley reminds us of how nuanced a storyteller he is. Here it is what is left unsaid that ironically speaks the most eloquently about Howard and his struggles; in these gaps in between exposition and dialogue the core emotional truths of his situation hit home. Dooley communicates so much in these interludes about Howard’s existence and his relationship with his immediate environment through a sublime sense of pacing, character expression and body language.

There’s something of the psychogeographical to the opening of Matthew Dooley’s Flake. Dooley, of course, is a Jonathan Cape/Observer/Comica short story competition winner and a prolific fixture on the UK small press scene in recent years. As Dooley’s debut graphic novel opens we silently view the deserted environs of a British seaside resort, its once proud glories lost to time, and its anachronistic attempts to cling on to relevance seeming pitiful and pointless. It’s a fitting opening to a tale of ice cream man Howard “Captain Cone” Grayling whose life has similarly stagnated, bound by family tradition to a vocation with a dying business model in an overcast Northern town, and no prospects beyond a slow and steady decline. AO: Let’s return to warring ice cream men and your Eisner-nominated graphic novel Flake. For those yet to read it how would you pitch the premise to them? Matthew Dooley has won the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with his graphic novel Flake (Jonathan Cape).

We had none of us, I think, expected a graphic novel to win, but we were all captivated by Flake,” said judge and publisher David Campbell, while judge Sindhu Vee called the book “a rare joy: a laugh out loud story with characters you want to meet again and again”. But Howard’s rivalry with Tony has a more personal element. Because this predatory purveyor of frozen taste sensations, who is determined to put him out of business and claim Howard’s father’s patch for his own, is also secretly his half-brother… Matthew Dooley’s debut graphic novel Flake is a joy ... If it was a film, you could see Bill Forsyth directing it. If it was on TV, you’d file it next to your Detectorists box set. But as it’s a graphic novel, think of Joff Winterhart with a cone and a squirt of strawberry sauce.' Herald Scotland Jasper’s overriding priorities, however, are his pet peeves, each as irrelevant to any sane human being as they are uncompromisingly and passionately pursued. For example, he spent six months in a French prison for trying to convert continental road signs from metric to imperial then painting his results on their signposts. So he’s averse neither to direct confrontation nor overt vandalism, which may well come in handy during the imminent North-West English Ice Cream Wars.(It doesn’t.)

Like this father before him, Howard is an ice-cream van man – a master of his craft, with all the local knowledge and subtle skills:“Identifying the best places to stop. Sensing the optimum moment to switch on his signature tune. His ears were acutely attuned to the sound of children laughing. And, more importantly, the sound of children crying.” Judge Sindu Vee described the winning graphic novel as "a rare joy: a laugh out loud story with characters you want to meet again and again". DOOLEY: I have a few ideas that are gently percolating. Hopefully one or more of those will end up as another graphic novel. I’m working on something shorter, but hopefully no less interesting, for my first time tabling at Thought Bubble… thank god for a deadline! Flake tells the story of two rival ice-cream men: Howard, who is meek and happiest hiding in his van doing the crossword; and Tony Augustus – Howard’s half-brother, as it happens – who is intent on building an empire across the region. It is set in the 1980s in the fictional town of Dobbiston, though Dooley admits that it shares much in common with Ormskirk, Lancashire, where he grew up. When a book opens with a man standing on top of an ice cream van slowly being submerged into the sea, the man seemingly accepting his fate, you're probably not expecting a book that is so absolutely brimming with the warmth and humour that this book absolutely was.AO: How much of a game-changer for you was winning the 2016 Cape/Observer/Comica Short Story Prize for ‘Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story’ (above)? AO: One of the things I loved about Flake were a couple of throwaway moments that nevertheless implied a kind of wider Dooleyverse. Do you see your stories all fitting together in the same shared universe?

Dooley first gained recognition when he won the Cape/Comica/Observer graphic short story prize in 2016, with another dairy related tale of a man Colin Turnball and his ambition to win Lancashire’s Tallest Milkman competition. When he’s not busy crafting comic tales, Dooley works at the House of Commons in education.Dooley, the 21st winner of the Wodehouse prize, said he was “surprised, overwhelmed and elated” to take this year’s award. His winnings include a jeroboam of Bollinger and a set of Wodehouse books. Dooley’s comments about his aspirations for the novel emphasise that it’s not ‘“some great allegory for big capitalist companies coming in and taking over the little man … or… about being an entrepreneur or anything like that. It’s not. It was an opportunity to make up some ice-creams, which was quite fun”’ (Lewis). It’s worth taking this seemingly self-deprecatory statement at face value and seeing it as a sincere articulation of the importance of frivolity; one that requires a re-examination of the cultural values that celebrate the serious or substantial and denigrate the frivolous. This hierarchy and the ‘divergence between “mere” and “serious”’ which it is predicated upon, ensures that we often try to justify humour by seeking its social or political purpose, which ‘causes us to devalue central elements of the experience of humor, namely, entertainment and pleasure’ (Wuster 162). In Dooley’s attachment to seemingly ‘superficial’ fun – ice-creams, crosswords, pub quizzes, crazy golf, puns – is a determination instead to value such pleasures, which, after all, are often such a crucial part of everyday happiness. Matthew Dooley has an off-centre, idiosyncratic, and often bleakly humorous view of the world; something that has been a constant on the UK indie scene since his work first started appearing in such influential anthologies as Dirty Rotten Comics and Off Life. His short strips have been seen in collections like Meanderings. The Practical Implications of Immortality and Catastrophising, and in 2016 he won the 2016 Cape/Observer/Comica Short Story Prize for ‘Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story’. Full of irresistible puns... A meld of Alan Bennett and the American comic-book artist Chris Ware... and also Tom Gauld. -- Tim Lewis * Observer *

This graphic novel is so darn inspiring and exactly the feel-good read I needed. I went in blind and had no idea it would be about ice cream, but enjoyed seeing all the creative business names and cool flavours. Not only is the artwork cute, I also loved both the layout and storytelling. MacDowell, James, Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema, Cliché, Convention and the Final Couple. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; 2013. This was such a human story that I devoured in one sitting. I really enjoyed the premise of an underdog fighting to make ends meet and preserve his dad's legacy, as well as how everyone in the community rallied together to help one other achieve their dreams. A sweet (pun intended) and uplifting read that I would totally recommend!

In Flake, Dooley’s ability to place the abruptly incongruous within the banal and the unremarkable proves once again to be the greatest strength of his comedic approach. He takes a traditional narrative structure as a starting point and then peppers it with anecdotal sidesteps about the residents and history of Howard’s home town Dobbiston that allow him to exercise the more extravagant parts of his imagination. David Campbell, judge and publisher of Everyman’s Library, comments: ‘This year’s shortlist was especially strong with a number of very credible potential winners. We had none of us, I think, expected a graphic novel to win, but we were all captivated by Flake.’