... every time.

The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell.

It's certainly funny........it's about a young boy who starts off becoming a scapegoat(for being a little boy really), then gets wrongly accused of a terrible crime because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.....and his life goes from bad to worse.

It's written in the style of sending a letter(or many letters)to his hero Morrissey of all people.

As I already said, very funny whilst being deeply moving and there are some great characters in there!

I got it for £2 from a charity shop.

But I'm not sure it's supposed to be funny.

The Slaves Of Solitude in particular is both hilarious and bleak - especially if you're predisposed to enjoy novels written/set in the 1930s & 40s.

You'll thank me. Really.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scoop-Journalists-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/014...

by William Kotzwinkle

"Once upon a time a big black bear discovered a manuscript under a tree. He read it, and decided it wasn't bad. Borrowing some clothes from a local store and the name Hal Jal from the label of his favourite food, he headed to New York to seek his fortune. There he took the literary world by storm."

Copied that from the Amazon synopsis, you can get this through them for 40p and it'll be the best 40p you've spent this year.

His two autobiographies - amongst the funniest things I've ever read, and of course are also about music. Also "Cider with roadies" by Stuart Maconie - I actually thought I was going to expire in the ELP bit (**knowing nods from others who have read it).

If we're talking novels, David Lodge and Tom Sharpe are worth a look.

Concur entirely on "Scoop" BTW.

Just finished Carl Hiassen's "Striptease" after a recommendation from a mate. Brilliant darkish humour. Stuart MacConnie's "Pies and Prejudice" is worth the price of admission for the chapter on Bury market and its black puddings..
Also further back in time but well worth searching out if you fancy something music related is "Lost In Music" by Giles Smith..laugh out loud stuff. Agree with the above on David Lodge, didn't click with Tom Sharpe though. I also have on my bedside a PG Wodehouse anthology which I'm saving for my holidays this year.

Robert Rankin's book are pretty funny. They often get placed in different genre's by book shops but he decribes them as "far fetched fiction". Very cleverly written.

"Waiting For Godalming" is one of my favourites. If you read a few there are also some rewarding nods to previous books, but just as enjoyable without.

....I re-read Clive James's "Unreliable Memoirs". It was probably twenty years since I'd first had to get off a tube train through laughing too hard at the story of the flies and the dunny man. But no matter how prepared I was it couldn't stop me from falling out of a hammock with laughter when I read it again. For those who have already read it, I shall confine myself to one word. "Durbar."

Thanks to all so far. I'm already up to speed with the likes of Hiaasen and Jacobsen. I could just re-read a few. That being one of the traits of strong wrting - you can read things over many times and still enjoy them.

Will definitley pick up Lost in Music. Stuart Maconie I've also read. I'd like his life sometimes. He writes a great, if brief, column in Country Walking Magazine every month too.

I read Unreliable Memoirs myself years ago and remember snorting a mixture of Tizer and snot down my nose at the words 'Pearl Harbour'. Read it.

Also read Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels for the narration. Brilliant.

I'd be grateful for anymore. Thanks again all.

but when I read Eric Newby's The Big Red Train Ride it made me laugh out loud. A LOT.

It's his and his wife's journey, in the 1970s, on the Trans-Siberian express and his tale of the official guide and the rules was just fab.

I loved it.

"Fargo Rock City" by Chuck Klosterman is very funny - it's a Hair Metal Memoir (a fairly small genre of course).

I've always found early Martin Amis (Rachel Papers etc.) pretty hilarious and his short story "Let Me Count The Ways" is one of the funniest things I have read. Also Woody Allen's pieces, in the days when his ambitions were solely to be very silly and very funny.

"The CEO Of The Sofa" or "Holidays in Hell" , or "Falling Towards England" by Clive James (the follow up to the aforementioned "Unreliable Memoirs")

His war memoirs are are snortably funny.

I would second the pjororke (holidays in hell is my favourite) & clive james books as well.

Marvellous. Some great ideas coming out. I'd love to hear of more.

I would recommend to anyone the short stories of Damon Runyan. All written in a first person narration which can be astonishinlgy funny at times.

Thanks. My Waterstones card will be white hot.

The early Dortmunder novels by Donald Westlake are well worth a look. And if you're a parent check out Living With Teenagers. Howlingly funny.

"A Liars Autobiography: Volume 6" by Michael Chapman. A very funny book and the demented footnotes made me laugh out loud on the bus.

"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind is a funny book. It's about the films that were made in the 70's that dwells on the drugs and the egos. It's worth reading just for the bits about William Friedkin (shooting guns on the set of The Exorcist to get startled reactions from the actors, slapping a priest to get a better performance etc. Basically being the biggest prick in a book surround by some of the biggest pricks on the planet).

Funny books you've probably already read: Catch 22, Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy etc.

Things Can Only Get Better
The Best a Man Can Get
and
This Is Your Life
all made me lol.
Martin Amis' Money is funny, though you may need to keep taking shower breaks.
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk (sp?) isn't really funny but has some hilarious moments.
I take it that you're familiar with Willans and Searle's Molesworth books - they still do it for me.

Three men in a Boat. Okay, it's not mad up-to-date but it still makes me laugh. A lot. If only for the account of Harris trying to sing a 'comic-song'.

http://books.google.ie/books?id=vkC7vC78f4AC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=harris+...

The opening to Bill Bryson's Notes From A Small Island (about the boarding house in Dover) is one of the funniest things I've read.

I remember the first of Spike Milligan's memoirs, Hitler - My Part In His Downfall, making me fairly helpless, although I was still at school then and I don't know how well that will have worn.

Agree with those who've mentioned Unreliable Memoirs - and yes, the dunny man incident was the highlight.

An unlikely (and perhaps I'm risking being labelled pretentious here - but hey, I did Modern Languages at uni) further item for your consideration is Voltaire's Candide: I vividly remember reading it on the tube once, in French, and laughing out loud.

The very top of my list is Jonathan Coe's masterpiece, What a Carve Up; specifically a short sequence where the narrator, a journalist, is trying out different versions of a sex scene in his putative novel. That really did have me crying with mirth.

is very funny. His two books Love and other near death experiences and Things my girlfriend and I have argued about are hilarious. The first of these is somehwat reminiscent of Nick Hornbys High Fidelity in its chronicling of the difference between the sexes but also has a Carl Hiassen like plot. A very funny writer who also has quite a witty website.

You see, this is what the internet is for.

I'm replete with gratitude.

More please.

I'm a big fan of "Sap rising" by AA Gill but I'm in a distinct minority here - even he doesn't like it any more!

Books like Espedair Street, The Crow Road and Dead Air, while covering a lot of ground emotionally, have several laugh out loud moments within their pages.

... is hysterical. At Swim Two Birds is brilliant. A piece of inspired silliness featuring Fairies, giants, Dublin based cowboys, characters from Celtic mythology and some of the most inspired descriptions of drunkenness ever put to paper. Also give his "The Poor Mouth" and "The Best Of Miles" a go. He's the funniest writer no one seems to have read.

David Sedaris is worth a peek as well; "Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim" is great, his short piece "Six To Eight Black Men" in that had me howling with glee.

Douglas Adams? Goes without saying, as does PG Wodehouse. An awful lot of his fans are a bit precious about him but time spent with Jeeves and Wooster is always a pleasure.

And good on the poster up above for mentioning Jerome K Jerome, but can I recommend his "Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow"? There are moments there, especially when he writes about cats and dogs where he comes across as a sort of Victorian Eddie Izzard.

Superb author of Irish humour! His best known work(probably)was "The Commitments" which was a major film. Others in The Barrytown Trilogy(which can be found as one volume)are "The Van" and "The Snapper". Mostly the same characters(or at least their relatives)in all three books.

"Paddy Clarke hahaha", "A Star Called Henry", "Oh Play That Thing", "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" and "Paula Spencer" are much more serious but still have much humour in them.

"The Deportees" is a collection of short stories about the emergence of immigrants in Ireland and the effect of multi cultures on the natives. Again, decent stories which I found funny.

Christopher Brookmyre was mentioned earlier I think? Excellent Scottish author. Tartan Noir is how I think the critics describe his books. His latest "The Attack Of The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks" is about psychics supposedly contacting peoples relatives from beyond the grave. The hero(and investigative journalist)Jack Parlabane smells something fishy.

I'd recommend any of his books though.

For years I've had a complete block where BB is concerned. But I've just finished "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid", his affectionate and hilarious memoir of growing up in the midwest in the 50's (Des Moines, Iowa to be precise) and would HEARTILY recommend it.

I would second the Mil Millington recommendation, and Three Men In A Boat. But be warned: Three Men On The Bummel is actually quite acceptable for your maiden aunt.

I am strangely immune to chortling when reading, which is more than can be said for the Wordcast, which regularly makes me snicker, and Steve Martin in The Man With Two Brains, which almost caused me to have a hernia from uncontrolled giggling. However, I found Mark Wallington's tales of long-distance walking with a strangely named and bad-mannered dog to be just the ticket for mirth. There is a two-books-in-one edition available, including 500 Mile Walkies and Boogie Up the River. They are like the bastard offspring of Jerome K. Jerome and Mil Millington.

Funniest writer I've read for years. All his books highly recommended.

...and nobody has mentioned Jasper Fforde yet??

If you like Pratchett, but find him a little too populist, try this man. Set in an alternative universe where neanderthals have been reborn and cheese is an illegal substance, a Detective by the name of Thursday Next finds she can enter books and change them...

The Eyre Affair is the first in the series.

Drop along to his website for a similarly trippy experience

http://www.jasperfforde.com/

His book Cider with Roadies got me told off by a nurse. Reading it in hospital while recovering from an operation, the senior ward nurse asked me to read something else because my laughter was upsetting the other patients!

When I got home, my recovery was aided by Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North; although my wife was worried about my stiches bursting....

Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody are both belters after all this time, I very much agree.

Milligan's 'Puckoon' is a must too. I don't think its in print anymore but his 'William McGonagall - The Truth At Last' is worth finding.

Woody Allen's latest collection of comic prose, 'Mere Anarchy', is just out in paperback and is excellent - basically a bunch of short stories laced with his absurd sense of humour. I bought it in hardback last year, and loved it.

Surprised no one's mentioned Matt Beaumont yet, the funniest novelist currently writing, IMHO of course. Check out his debut, 'E', a novel written entirely in emails, about the increasingly desperate attempts of an ad agency to land the Coca-Cola account; or his follow-up, 'The Book, The Film, The T-Shirt', a hilarious account of the shooting of a TV ad.

Don't be put off by the 'meeja' subject matter - he's a genuinely funny writer, adept at manipulating characters and situations for comic effect.

A quick mention too for David Nicholls, author of 'Starter For Ten' and 'The Understudy', both very funny novels.

on the bus while reading the late Pete McCarthy's 'The Road To McCarthy'. In Anchorage (Hi Michelle!) he sees a show by a convention of female close-harmony singing groups and recounts how one line stayed with him. It's a saying Alaskan women have which reflects the preponderance of males in that state's population, and also the tendency of Alaska to attract more than its fair share of loners and eccentrics : "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

...which is David Niven's auto-biography was very good. And on the auto-biograpghy front, Stephen Fry's Moab Is My Washpot comes highly recommended - though I know he's not everybody's cup of Twinnings.

Kurt Vonnegut III,all of his work.

Just finished this one after picking it up early last week - American Psycho for the UK music biz - hilarious and horrifying; a sprayed orange juice over the window when someone shouts out a particular question to Debbie Harry at Glastonbury!

Superb!

by Roddy Doyle. Great characters, superb dialogue. Great stuff.

I really love the Malcolm Pryce "Louis Knight" series, Aberystwyth Mon Amour, Last Tango In Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and the latest, still unread here, Dont Cry for Me Aberystwyth. Quite bizarre, very funny, and superbly written.

...many, but, for me Kyril Bonfiglioli is laugh-out-loud funny. I think All the Tea in China is out of print, but The Mortdecai Trilogy is worth a look.

Has anyone mentioned The Kinkster ? If it's razor-sharp and fabulously un-PC one-liners you're after I'd recommend just about anything by the great Jewish Texan c&w singing private detective. A couple of examples from memory: (1) I was sitting at the bar when a guy came up behind me and used the oldest homosexual come-on in the book: "Can I push your stool in for you ? " (2) "I was so high I needed a stepladder to scratch my ass".
Check him out. You won't regret it.

by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Will almost certainly get you the wrong sort of attention on the train.

P.G. Wodehouse goes without saying (so I've said it). There's an anthology with an intro by Stephen Fry that is simply wonderful. Perfect for anyone that isn't too sure period stories about endearing upper-class twits is really for them.

If you like Donald E Westlake's amusing crime novels, check out Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley novels, beginning with MIAMI BLUES. Westlake and Elmore Leonard were huge fans of Willeford, who died 20 years ago. So was (is) Tarantino. His novels aren't exactly comic but they're full of believable and unpredictable characters and a moral sense not unlike an episode of The Wire. They always have at least one huge, unexpected laugh-out-loud moment. I am in the middle of reading my fifth one on the trot. Early morning coffee and a Willeford novel can't be beat.

Since this thread kicked off I've picked up a few of the recommendatons, one of which is a Donald Westlake - 'What's So Funny'.

Very pleasant. A modern day, or at least contemporary, crime novel featuring a cast of hapless Manhattan felons. Some great and natural sounding dialogue between them all. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It owes a lot to Damon Runyan in a way.

Recommended. Again.

Noticed a mention of Clive James' "Unreliable Memoirs", which has to be one of the best childhood memoirs ever published.
Running close, in my opinion, is David Niven's first volume of his autobiography "The Moons A Balloon".
Absolutely hilarious and charming (as you would expect from Niven) tales of his rather unconventional upbringing, expulsion from school, corrective boarding houses and scary step fathers.
Then his "education" at the hands of a Piccadilly tart, the casual drift into a career at Hollywood that gets rudely interrupted by the war. It is a really good uplifting read.

I'll second the nod for David Sedaris, if you like camp Americans. I do.

He's camp isn't he, but Canadian, and funny in a quite dark way? His last novel,'The Gun Thief' is certainly bleakly humorous.

In the words of my little bro' 'piss funny'. Apologies for not having chapter and verse on the podcast, but the book I was talking about (apparently '"Quite simply, the greatest music book ever written." - Mick Mercer, Melody Maker, and "A remarkable biography. Books like this are few and far between." - Charles Shaar Murray, NME) is available on US Amazon here;

http://www.amazon.com/Elvis-Novel-Robert-Graham/dp/1899344195

And imho well worth a punt. Be interested to hear what you think of it...

Real laugh out loud material (as you might expect). The part detailing his first sexual experience is the funniest and least erotic description of sex I've ever read.

Discworld seems to be a bit unfashionable these days and perhaps associated with IT geeks living in their mother's basements, but honestly, Terry can come up with truly wonderful witticisms. In describing the head of the Unseen University: "He was to corporate management what Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association".

I thought this was just hilarious. Especially the masturbation chapter.

Not read recently but still think Catch 22 is one of the funniest books ever written, and Everyone should go out any by The Risk Pool by Richard Russo. I've been banging on about it for 18 years and still think its brilliant. (Father Son etc.)