THERE is a great big gap in British comedy, especially on radio, where the late Jeremy Hardy used to be and this book of his writing and ad libs goes a little way towards filling it.

Its pages are joyful, caustic, daft and provocative  — “I was born on a council estate but once I’d been called Jeremy we had to move” — and the material, edited by his widow Katie Barlow and long-time producer David Tyler, is the kind of tome you can dip into and devour.

Hardy, who died early last year at the age of 57, could be fierce on politics. “Racist journalists ask why we should help asylum-seekers ‘who have done nothing for this country,”' he commented on his long-running radio show Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation.