Funny man:

Dundee Central Library, November 18

“Indisputably the funniest man I’ve ever worked with,” is how the former BBC and now ITV political editor Robert Peston chose to describe his friend Eddie Mair, which is a good advertisement for this in-person talk at the Central Library with Mair.

Known to the nation as the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s topical magazine programme PM, he mixes an amiable manner with a knack for incisive, underthe-radar political journalism.

For an example of Mair’s style, go online and find the clip where he genially took apart an underprepared Boris Johnson following the Queen’s Speech in June of this year.

His current placing near the very top of the pile of political commentators in the UK is the high point so far of a journey which began in Dundee, when the 52-year-old Mair – the son of a lorry driver and a nurse, who went to Braeview Academy School (or Whitfield High, as it was then) – turned down a university place to work for Radio Tay.

It’s been 30 years since Mair moved to Radio Scotland and nearly 25 since the shift to Radio 4, with stints on 5 Live and presenting Newsnight on BBC2 also added to his CV.

Yet the main purpose of this talk is to celebrate a recent career change, with Mair’s diary column in the Radio Times – which he started in 2010 – appearing as a collected book edition this month. With typically dry humour, he’s named it A Good Face for Radio.

As might be expected from the original format in which it appeared, the book is a light read which doesn’t dig out real dirt from behind the coalface of British political broadcasting, so much as draw back the curtain partway on Mair’s working week and the cast of characters who pass through it.

Listeners who enjoy his distinctive voice – and you’ll be unable to read the book without hearing Mair speaking every word – will love its dependable mix of the authoritative and the amusingly perplexed.

He covers a lot, from the time he made Bono cry on air when he asked about his late friend Luciano Pavarotti (from a segment on how death is reported) to the reaction of BBC stars to the corporation revealing their pay and the response to the death of Jimmy Saville, even before the revelations emerged.

“I don’t think I could think of a single nice thing to say about him,” Mair reports one unnamed DJ as saying, and then they hung up.

There’s plenty more within its pages to suggest that Mair won’t be short of an anecdote or two in person.

Dundonian Eddie Mair will be at Dundee Central Library, talking about his new book and fascinating career.