MY SIX BEST BOOKS

BEN, 53, is an actor, comedian and author who starred in Johnny English. His latest children’s novel The Boy Who Made The World Disappear (Simon & Schuster, £12.99) is out now.

THE FIGHT

by Norman Mailer

(Penguin Classics, £9.99)

A really special book about the Ali vs Foreman fight in Zaire. Mailer goes to the training camp and makes you really feel like you were there. Fantastic journalism.

THE DIARY OF A NOBODY

by George and Weedon Grossmith (Penguin Classics, £6.99)

Probably the silliest book ever. It’s the diary of a minor figure in Edwardian England, halfway up the social ladder, who gets it from both ends.Very funny and long before Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones.

IN COLD BLOOD

by Truman Capote

(Penguin, £8.99)

Capote interviewed two boys who had committed horrific murders in small-town Kansas to understand who they were and why they did it.

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

by John Buchan (Penguin Classics, £6.99) Alexander Armstrong introduced me to this and I love it. It’s the forerunner of Bond and all things spy. Hiding behind hedgerows is how every Englishman imagines himself.

THE PICKWICK PAPERS

by Charles Dickens

(Penguin Classics, £8.99)

Dickens was commissioned to put words to illustrations and it grew into this. It’s very different to his later work, it’s jolly and not at all sad. It’s like Star Trek on a coach and four.

NIGHT TRAIN

by Martin Amis

(Vintage, £9.99)

This is a great riff on detective fiction. It’s a noir parody about a female homicide detective called Mike, who’s a woman, investigating a woman’s death.