Underneath this haze of self-deprecation, there is a through line of an absolutely solid determination to be up there on stage, showing off. When she was a kid, growing up in Leatherhead with a Polish father and English mother (her dad was an engineer and, for his second act, a Latvian medievalist), her pattern was that she’d try for the school play, not get a part, “and I’d say: ‘Maybe I could write a little prologue?’ And I’d write something really long, and end up with quite a big part. Such a showoff.” Giedroyc would like one more throw of the dice doing a standup show with Perkins, but has questions over whether they’d ever sit down and write it. She is writing a novel, adjacent to her first, with a couple of recurring characters, which she hopes to eventually turn into a Leatherhead trilogy. She enjoys not being a “bright young thing” any more, saying “it’s actually quite a relief when people aren’t that interested”. She mildly fears getting cancelled, but not in a Laurence Fox/GB News “you can’t say anything any more” way, more by her children. “I’m walking on eggshells, honestly.” (Hard relate. My kid called me racist the other day when I said I preferred boxers to spaniels.) She is as she started out, all drive and no plan, the way I think maybe comedians have to be, if they want to be funny. Overall. It’s a fun, enjoyable well written read and a nice piece of escapism, so needed at this time.

Writing style This is a book about a woman who essentially devolves (or evolves, as it would like us all to think) into an animal, which makes it a slightly less high-minded version of Paula Cocozza’s novel How to Be Human. It rips along at a decent clip and, even though O’Porter now lives in Los Angeles, does a very good job of depicting the empty aspirational scuzz of the London creative scene. In fact, this is where it thrives. The chapters about Mia’s awful workplace are much more compelling than the ones where she stops washing and pretends to be a cat. Catherine moves to Dublin, she has a baby called Cyril and she gives him up for adoption. The book is basically about their two lives, her life and his life, and they’re both treated as outcasts. Because she never got married but had a child that she had to give up for adoption, and Cyril is this boy who grows up with his adoptive parents, who were really eccentric – one’s an author who chain smokes.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

It starts off with a lady called Catherine, who is 16 years old and she gets pregnant. She's from a strict Catholic family in Ireland. It's all about society and attitudes. Previous works An autobiography (And Away…) and a Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing tie-in gift book. Previous works Two other Thursday Murder Club books, Richard Osman’s House of Games, A Pointless History of the World, The World Cup of Everything: Bringing the Fun Home. Who should buy this book? If I had to guess, I’d say every single woman who owns a cat will have this pressed into her hands over the next few months. Plot Sally Parker is the bored wife of an elaborately rich hedge fund manager. She has a full-time nanny, a chef and someone to groom her dogs. But when her husband suddenly goes bankrupt, all this is whipped away from her and she can start to find herself again. This debut novel comes from the comedian and former Bake Off co-host Mel Giedroyc, one half of Mel and Sue.

Much-loved actress, comedian and writer Mel Giedroyc heads to Dorset on a travel adventure with a twist. Inspired by her passion for books, Mel hooks up with her friend and Dorset local, Martin Clunes, to explore the spectacular scenery and iconic locations made famous by some of Britain's favourite books and films. We are not here to talk about the almost 35-year-old comedy dyad at all, but Unforgivable, the chaotic panel show on Dave which is just about to enter its third season. On it, Giedroyc is paired with Lou Sanders (“Twenty years younger. Actually I don’t know how old she is, she told me once but I’m a bit deaf”), and they invite a panel of three comedians to disclose the worst things they’ve ever done. Then some regular people come on and admit random bad acts. Who should buy this book? Fans of The Great British Bake Off, especially fans who have just started to notice how wobbly the show has got without her. The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman It’s fine for what it is; Mel writes well, it’s decently structured and readable. The trouble is, it all seemed such old hat – to the point of being trite in places. The characters are well drawn but oh-so-familiar and I really couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for any of it. Often, somebody will spill something that we didn’t know they were going to spill,” she says. “But Joel … he does The Masked Singer, he’s really Mr ITV, Saturday night. He’s not Mr One-in-the-Morning.” That’s sort of Unforgivable’s USP: it takes nice, mainstream, even daytime TV people and turns them into Mr or Mrs-One-in-the-Morning. “When you have three people, they start to get competitive with each other,” she says, “and that’s when it gets really fun. Especially with comics. They don’t want to be outdone.Rich family losing everything is a trope that is well-used in books, and one I thought I could get behind in an easy to read sort of way. But I just could not. The Best Things relies on a very well-worn trope: a very wealthy woman finds herself rather bored and without purpose. She has little relationship with her husband or children who are all cocooned in their own comfortable worlds...until they lose everything and have to survive together and begin to learn Valuable Life Lessons. This is Mel Giedroyc's debut novel and is about Sally & Frank Parker. Frank is a successful businessman and he family live in a luxurious home seemingly having it all. Unfortunately Frank loses everything on the same day he finds out he has narcolepsy which leads to some very dramatic changes to the Parker lifestyle. It took me ages to get into the book. The first few chapters seemed really slow and "wordy" and the story just seemed to takes ages to get going, but as I perservered I found myself wanting to find out what happens. As I said I really like Mel, shes always funny on TV alongside Sue Perkins so I expected a lot of humour from this one and I wasnt disappointed, there were some really funny moments in the book. I found some of the characters a bit one dimensonal and stereotypical, and Frank Parker was really annoying and I was quite glad when he went bankrupt! The saving grace was Mikey, the 11 year old daughter who seems to save the family and be pretty much the most sensible one. I also liked the dog groomer who has a crush on Sally and is always there to help her! Mel is a bit of a national treasure and immensely engaging. So I was very much looking forward to this, especially after the justified success of Richard Osman’s first book.

Throughout this revealing and joyful episode Martin shares his love for Dorset, takes Mel to his favourite secret spot, explains how Peter O’Toole inspired him to get into acting and talks about his childhood.

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith

I found this did not have any flow at all - one minute we were looking at Sally and the next one of her four children or someone else seemingly random. This meant, for me, I found it really hard to keep up with and was a bit lost at times. I did not feel any empathy towards the characters, even though they had lost everything and just found it all a bit odd. Everything happened quite fast, but in a way it was very slow to get into. The family's friends were awful - Surely most people aren't that hurtful and mean? People going up to Sally's wardrobe and clearing it out of her designer gear and her not saying a word was plain silly. The staff were awful too - again, surely nobody would allow people to work for them in their home that they hated as much as these? It's about two friends, John and Owen, and it's written in the first person by John who's talking about his best friend Owen, who is an odd boy - he is very, very small, he has almost iridescent, luminescent skin and a very, very odd voice. A sort of high-pitched nasal voice which is illustrated in the book every time that Owen speaks - it's in capital letters! I can hear him.

Cover quote “His grasp of human loneliness and longing is beautiful and comforting” – Marian Keyes (again). Every woman who owns a cat will want this Dawn O’Porter book. Photograph: Dave M Benett/Getty ImagesPlot A story told over four generations of Welsh women – an unstoppable pensioner, her estranged daughter, her abandoned daughter, and then her daughter – written by the actor and Gavin and Stacey co-creator Ruth Jones. Can these women heal the complex wounds that drove them apart? This novel sounded so intriguing. I kind of love seeing rich people get their come-uppances by thinking they'll always be rich and it turns out, they won't. Not when they buy exorbitantly expensive things just for the sake of it, and the person who brings in the money works in the financial sector of all places. However, what normally makes those novels great is that it gives the characters a certain humility. It makes them humble and appreciative and, quite honestly, the Parker family were so bloody up themselves I just didn't care about them. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his many years, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.