Photograph: Alamy View image in fullscreen Diary of a Somebody focuses on Brian, a 45-year-old sad sack with a yen for custard creams. Eithne Farry * Sunday Express * Bilston is no stranger to crafting cleverly composed poetry * Huffington Post * Part John Cooper Clarke, part Frank Sidebottom . With over 250,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community. In 1892, George and Weedon Grossmith published The Diary of a Nobody, now a classic of comic writing.

If you like wordplay, puns and funny poetry, put Brian Bilston’s Diary of a Somebody on your wishlist. Or it may be a novel that starts out as comic before turning altogether darker, such as JG Farrell’s Troubles. Having made his name as “the poet laureate of Twitter” – a dubious honorific – he published an excellent debut collection in 2016, You Took The Last Bus Home, which showcased his puckish wit, typographical twists and genius for wordplay.It sounded like a modernised male version of Bridget Jones Diary, which I really enjoyed reading (about 1/4 of a century ago). I've never read poetry before, but this book has a story with a little poetry thrown in, that will make you laugh and make you cry. Bilston is a magician with words, but he’s no storyteller; the plot is on the level of a sitcom, as are its characters. A beautifully written story, peppered with poems that enhance and advance the story, rather than distract. The main character Brian, actually was a bit of a male version Bridget Jones, except Bridget was likeable.

And yet I don’t think it’s an outstanding book, let alone, as the publisher’s blurb claims, “the most original novel you will read this or any year”. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Whilst that goes by the wayside some days, we are still treated to many poems of the very clever and mostly rhyming variety that I love.topical, witty, thoughtful * Irish Times * The pseudonymous Brian Bilston turns the base metal of comic verse into gold . Sophie acquires a dynamic partner, the paragon of all virtues, a man whose success does not stop him from doing good deeds and who inspires Brian’s son with motivational quotes.