69 for 1

In Alan Coren’s world, children, threatened by Josef Mengele’s poisoned chickens, still turn to Winston Churchill to save them from school dinners, Clark Gable snuggles, as ever, against the bristly chest of his lover Errol Flynn (despite having been captured on video by the entire British delegation of a Hong Kong sales conference), and, though the NHS budget has soared to record heights, hysterectomies throughout the queendom continue to be performed by enthusiastic poulterers. As for Coren himself, despite bearing the distinguished rank of full colonel in the Confederate Air Force, he remains plagued by recurrent nightmares that his membership of the P.G. Wodehouse Society has been poached by a Polish imposter in spats. Nightmares can get that way if your every waking moment is infested with worries about the American takeover of HP Sauce. Nevertheless, England’s best-loved humorist still found time between these covers to explain why Cannon & Ball have relaunched themselves as Pride & Prejudice, to work out that if J.K. Rowling had put all her Harry Potter income on Archer’s Folly in the 3.15 at Haydock Park she would be richer than Bill Gates, and to reveal exactly why he took Princess Michael of Kent to see the smuttiest statue in London. For that is the world in which Alan Coren lived – quirky, laugh-out-loud funny, simply inimitably Coren. This is a wonderful tribute to a great writer and humorist. Alan Coren, who died last year, wrote 21 humorous books for adults, 10 novels for children, plays, documentaries and situation comedies and edited a dozen anthologies of humour and fiction. For 30 years a weekly resident on Radio 4's The News Quiz, and for ten years a team captain on BBC1's Call My Bluff, he also contributed a weekly column to The Times.