A pint of plain is your only man

Today, in addition to being April Fools, was Myles Day - time to celebrate the extraordinary talent of Flann O'Brien, or Myles na gCopaleen or Brian O'Nolan. If he'd done nothing else but write The Third Policeman that would be enough for me, I've reread that book so many times I've lost count - it's a book that is not only incredibly funny but stays with you and colours the way you see the world. And there was so much more! The other novels, the inimitable newspaper column...no one but Flann could have given us the atomic theory of bicycles or the detailed and increasingly hysterical business plan, advertising and catalogue of services for the world's first "book handling" service for illiterate rich people who feel the need to have yards of books in their house - for a scale of charges professional book handlers can make them all look as if they've been read till their spines are falling apart, annotated appropriately with such margin notes as "I remember poor Joyce saying the same thing to me", socially impressive theatre tickets and letters left casually as forgotten bookmarks in their pages, inscriptions on their fly leafs from obsequiously grateful authors such as George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Hardy ...

If you've never read him I advise you to do so immediately, your brain will thank you. Start with "The Third Policeman" (his masterpiece) or dip into his shorter works collected in "The Best of Myles", then move on to "The Poor Mouth", "At swim two birds" and "The Dalkey Archive".

here's a very small taster read by Tommy Teirnan