Why the Reggie Perrin novel deserves to be considered a classic in its own right

It was eerie the first time I watched The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin because it all felt so familiar. Suddenly my parents’ baffling banter made sense. When I thought they were speaking gibberish they were in fact quoting Perrin. My mother would say ‘great’ and my father would say ‘super’. My father would say things like ‘I didn’t get where I am today’ and my mother would say ‘I’m not a committee person.’ If lunch was going to be late my father would say ‘bit of a cock-up on the catering front.’ It’s difficult to overstate how thoroughly Perrin has seeped into popular culture and language.

David Nobbs, who died last month, is best known as the writer of three series of Reggie Perrin starring Leonard Rossiter but it’s worth going back to his original novel The Death of Reginald Perrin published in 1975. The eponymous hero is Reginald Iolanthe Perrin whose inane job as middle manager at convenience pudding company, Sunshine Desserts, is sending him slowly mad.