Elephants walk on tiptoes — but can they dance? This year’s stocking-fillers explore such puzzles

It’s almost a shock to admit it, but this year’s gift books aren’t bad at all. It’s even possible that, should you be given one of these for Christmas by the aunt who hates you or the brother who merely despises you, you might actually enjoy it — more than the acrylic scarf or the comedy socks that I always get from my least favourite relatives, anyway.

What with one thing and another, there are roughly four million new books by comedians, all written during lockdown when there was nothing else to do. The best I read was Bob Mortimer’s sweet, elegiac memoir And Away… (Gallery Books, £20), which tells of how an impossibly shy solicitor saw Vic Reeves performing on the tiny stage of a south London pub, was entranced by his comic brilliance and got involved in the show, first as a sidekick and later as a fully fledged partner-in-laffs.