Mrs Slocombe's Pussy

After meeting Stuart Jeffries at the 2000 Edinburgh Festival, and concluding that he was a bit like me, I bought a copy of his book, which he signed. He'd been reading out the chapter on British sitcoms, an analysis of 'Are You Being Served?' (hence the title of the book). I raced through the book in under a week; it is funny, poignant, reflective and written with the clarity, and spirit of inquiry of someone who has studied philosophy.

My favourite section is about the last winter Olympic games and first appeared in the Guardian (I remember because I cut it out, it was so funny). The ice skater Nicky Slator is intentionally confused with the highly probable Nicky Skater the ice slator. Ice slating, Jeffries conjectures, could feasibly be one of the new-that-year Olympic sports.