In a moment of clarity, his father says to him, “You’ve accomplished so many fantastic things in your life. He may have a go at his father – the man who took the “dreaded fraternity paddle” to his young son’s upper thigh for singing in ‘Laugh, Kookaburra’ – but the final essay, ‘Unbuttoned’, where Sedaris and his siblings prepare for Sedaris senior’s inevitable end as he passes away bit by bit in a nursing home, is properly touching. He might be taking the living piss out of psychics – and rightly so, the ridiculous charlatans – in ‘The Spirit World’ but the story really betrays how much his misses his late mother and his sister, Tiffany.

He gets plenty of mileage out of his partner Hugh and his family, but it comes across as affectionate rather than sniping. Who amongst us has not wondered what might have happened had we got off the train in that Italian University town when we were asked? The nun joke is good too. While there are laughs in ‘A Guy Walks Into A Bar Car’, it’s a beautifully-realised tale of longing and regret for the road not taken. Later, you’re wondering if the talking bear in ‘The Motherless Bear’ really is a bit of a pain in the neck and hardly warranted the hate mail Sedaris apparently received because of it. He critiques a nativity scene, “In the role of Mary, six-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin.” That’s as cruel as it is funny, and Sedaris is very funny.

Right from the off, you’re laughing along at vicious fare like ‘Front Row Centre With Thaddeus Bristol’, and any parent who tells you they don’t sympathise with Mr Bristol at the school play is telling you lies.

It’s a handsome edition and should make the perfect gift for the smart arse – or would-be smart arse – in your life. The Best Of Me, as the title might suggest, is a sort of greatest hits collection, selected by Sedaris from nearly thirty years at the typewriter. If it’s in The New Yorker, on the other hand, and you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you.” According to the man himself, getting his foot in the door at The New Yorker in 1995 was the big deal though, “If you read an essay in Esquire and don’t like it, there could be something wrong with the essay. His appearances on the late night shows like Craig Ferguson’s much-missed gag fest were always good gas and all. Sedaris’ essays have been making those in the know laugh since the early nineties when he made his breakthrough, first on Chicago local radio, and then on NPR with his ‘Santaland Diaries’ essay, which documented the seasonal joys of working as a elf in a Christmas department store.

Sedaris the best of me