Best books… Jim Moir
The comedian and artist – aka Vic Reeves – picks his favourite books.
Vic Reeves Art Book (Unbound £25), a collection of his paintings, featuring 200 works and with a foreword by Grayson Perry, is out now
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, 1930 (Penguin £9.99). I love Waugh’s funny novels – there’s a surreal scene in Scoop where Mrs Stitch drives her car into the men’s toilets because she suddenly sees a man she knows – but this story of the London party scene after the First World War is my favourite. It’s a funny, anxious and resonant book. I even called a pig of mine Lady Metroland in its honour.
It can’t all be classics, though. A constant toilet-side companion is Potty, Fartwell
and Knob by Russell Ash, 2007 (Headline £8.99), an anthology of people’s real names that turn out to be unexpectedly rude, like Mary Trimbush and Fanny Wig. It’s a bit puerile, but no less enjoyable for that.
Messing Up the Paintwork: The Wit & Wisdom of Mark
E. Smith, 2018 (Ebury £9.99). I knew Mark E. Smith of The Fall quite well and consider him one of the great wordsmiths of the modern age. This needs no further introduction. It’s like a night out with Mark. You wouldn’t be working the next day.
Slang Down the Ages by Jonathon Green, 1993 (Kyle Cathie, out of print). This is another favourite I go back to regularly. I love slang and I’m always looking for old words I can slide into conversation to see if I can bring them back into circulation. “Sod”, for example, which needs to be saved from extinction.
Grave’s End by William Shaw, 2020 (riverrun £16.99). Finally, I’m recommending a crime novel, which is odd, because other than Crime &
Punishment, it’s the only crime novel I’ve ever read. It’s extremely well written and gripping – but I’ve chosen it mainly because it is set in Kent, really near to where I live. It makes the story a lot more vivid when you know each lane and field where the horrors are taking place.
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk