A little goes a long way

No book can be entirely bad that tells you a zebra is basically black with up to 250 white stripes, that Princess Diana’s colonic irrigation treatment required ten gallons of water or that the height of the Eiffel Tower grows seven inches during a normal summer (although in this one it has probably shrunk). So many of life’s minor pleasures are contained in the ivvy words — frivolity, privies, rivers, trivets, vivacity, privilege, to name an immediate few — it is no surprise to find an entire book devoted to triviality. A shelf might seem about right for such a subject. But in fact, if all the publications associated with quizzes, lists, useless information, strange achievements and bizarre phenomena were put together, trivia books would fill a warehouse, and the prototype, The Guinness Book of Records, sells three million copies annually. Which is where Mark Mason steps in. Triviality, he declares like a fashion editor insisting that white is this season’s black, is the new importance.