The Satsuma Complex

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So it’s not surprising that, while reading The Satsuma Complex, I could hear his voice every time his lead character, Gary Thorn, opened his mouth. But she’s left her book and it’s got a message from her on it, saying that he might be interested in reading it. It’s almost as if you’re in the living room with them, laughing along as the generations clash, but also realising that this is how history is made.

I can imagine someone trying to turn it into a TV series with a CGI squirrel and I think it’d do really well.

In April 2015, Mortimer took over from the late Rik Mayall as Bombardier Bedford, the mascot of Wells Bombardier Beer. The two friends, who have both suffered from heart conditions, shared their thoughts and experiences while fishing at a variety of locations around the UK. Gary and his crabby neighbour Grace – who suspects that the detectives who’ve informed him of Brendan’s death may not be police officers at all – team up as an investigative odd couple, and the plot thickens. There’s a bit of a mystery, a bit of romance, and a bunch of insight in human beings and their behaviour.

If you are in Australia or New Zealand (DVD Region 4), note that almost all DVDs distributed in the UK by the BBC and 2entertain are encoded for both Region 2 and Region 4. Like Spike Milligan, the only vintage comic whose fiction is still read, Mortimer has managed to use a novel as a vehicle for his distinctive comedic voice.

There is something for everyone here - missing people, murder, a love story and so many funny lines and plot twists. With his status as national treasure assured, Bob Mortimer can expect a lot of goodwill for his debut novel, an amiable crime thriller. If you are in the North America, look out for US/Canadian flag icons on popular product listings for direct links. It takes the reader behind the scenes of the fictional seaside village of Llaregubb (adults should read the town’s name backwards for a giggle) – giving a glimpse of what life is like for a whole range of people. The story includes many of the usual crime thriller topes – from a possible femme fatale to the calmly intimidating nemesis – but also so many sweetly surreal peculiarities that it could only have been written by Bob Mortimer.

He tells the squirrel what he’s planning to do next and the creature, as ventriloquised by Gary, tries to talk him out of it.

Instead Gary focusses on a gorgeous brunette, Emily, sitting at the bar reading a book titled The Satsuma Complex (how clever is that! Gary loves a regular chat with a squirrel in his playground, and his favourite chat-up lines include, “Have you ever needed to use a tourniquet in your work environment? In 1986, Mortimer went to the Goldsmith's Tavern in New Cross, London, to see a new show by the comedian Vic Reeves.

Far too many profanities for no reason that dilute their impact, a weird obsession with toilet humour that isn't funny. It traces the life he enjoyed but still brought him pain, and he owns his mistakes and discusses his flaws openly. As in his television work, Mortimer conveys an infectious joy in his own oddity, and, as his recent bestselling memoir And Away… showed, there’s a sweetness to his worldview that makes his writing gently poignant.

Fashionable west London is the setting for Griffiths’s third novel to feature DI Harbinder Kaur, now relocated from Sussex. In The Satsuma Complex there's nothing stopping him from going into the absurd, and there's nothing to keep the plot from getting carried away with itself.