The funniest book you've ever read

[Thomcat]

We're choosing a comedy book in the next book club Igo to. I have to say I've never read a funny book, well not that I can think of.
What's the funniest book you've ever read?

IMHO Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson is even funnier than Small Island. (It's the collected columns he wrote for the Mail on Sunday when he first went back to live in America.)

miggy, thanks so much for mentioning Mil, I forgot him. He has a hysterical webpage where you can sign up for occasional newsletters which are also v funny.

Oh, just thought of another one although like Big Country it's just a collection of columns - Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade

Love all these

French Revolutions by Tim Moore is great - about cycling the Tour de France route. I'm not interested in the Tour much but loved it.

And then there's Molesworth - childish but hilarious.

And Sellar & Yeatman - 1066 and all that plus 3 others. I read And Now All This in the school library aged about 15 and was sent out - "need it desperately with both knees" from "How to Knit Ginger-Beard" was what did it for me.

Silly more than funny maybe but they were writing in 1930, I had no idea anybody was so silly then!

Another vote for John O Farrell, I really laughed at Things Can Only Get Better and The Best a Man Can Get, also agree with Bill Bryson, he makes me laugh too.

Yes I agree The Best a man Can Get is very very funny

the time waster letters - painfully funny... DH had to get off the tube while reading it as he was in fits...

Round Ireland with a fridge by Tony Hawkes. Laughed from begining to end then again when i read it again and again!

I just read Confessions of a slacker mom by muffy mead and had a good laugh. If anyone is into scrapbooking, don't read this book.

I've just got into Fidelis Morgan's 'Cagney & Lacey in Corsets' books - they have me in stitches and are damned good mysteries too. Celia Imrie is making them into a TV series, can't wait.
Also, not fiction but a great coffeetable book or gift, is The Timewaster Letters by Robin Smith - DH & I are always giggling about Parmaynu the Pingpong bat.

Wilt by Tom Sharpe. Mad me hoot.

Bill Bryson, reading his stuff for the first time made me laugh until I cried.....esp the Lost Continent

Loved Clive James Unreliable Memoirs.....real LMAO stuff hillarious.

O'Farell Things can only get better

Quite ugly one morning by Christopher Brookmyre - hysterical if you like your humour dark and scatalogical.

oooooh lovely thread

practically anything by Bill Bryson
Christohper Brookmyre may be a bit on the blackside for some (especially anyone who suggested Cecilia Aherne!!!)
playing tennis with the Moldavians and One Hit Wonder by Tony Hawkes
Clive James Unreliable Memoirs was brill and surprisingly touching/poignant in parts re:his mother's struggles as a war widow]

also any of Armistead Maupins Tales of the City Series

Ohh forgot about Armisted Maupin, love all his stuff too, did you know that there is going to be a new Tales of the City Book? Working title is Michael Tolliver is still alive.

Thinly Disguised Autobiography by James Delingpole

Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield.

Bill Bryson good, Steven Fry good, Cathy Lettie also good

I once 'met' Bill Bryson in a book signing.....the queue was huge and dd was about 2 at the time. It took a load of tetty tubbie chocolates to get her to stay in the push chair while we waited. As I got to the end of the queue I gave her the last of the sweets and said to Bill that I had always said I would never bribe my kids. He laughed and said that he always ended up bribing his! Seemed like a nice guy.

try "and god created the au pair" Laughed so hard almost fell out of bed. moms will relate to this book.

book

Where Rainbows End - fantastic!!

Forest Gump - Winston Groom.

Hysterical

agree with anything by Bill Bryson, also Mil Millington- Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About- and also EF Benson's Miss Mapp And Lucia series is really funny.

Second Tom Sharpe

Dead Babies by Martin Amis

1066 and all that used to have me weeping with laughter as a child, something to do with kneading desparately with your knees?