Take a quick look at the reviews of Graham Linehan’s new book Tough Crowd and you will gather that he is what we might call a ‘controversial figure’. Depending on which publication you read, you will find that the book is both brilliantly and poorly written, Linehan is both compassionate and dangerously heartless, and his comic genius is both unassailable and tragically wasted.

Graham Linehan is most famous for being a writer and creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, as well as having involvement with a string of other television comedies including Black Books.