What with all the world’s leaders making such a mess of everything, here at last is a little book of advice for the thinking citizen to assist in regaining control of some of life’s timeless essentials.

The internet is full of recipes for such things as making clothes hangers from old bottle tops. But what about that really useful stuff, like how to get into a coconut, unblock a drain, or sweep a step? Here in this indispensable book you can find a small but significant portfolio of practical wisdom accumulated during the author’s many years of life.

These life hacks are illustrated verbally by stories drawn from hard-won experience, and graphically too – some in colour.

From the dancing joy of childhood, to the age of man when nose-hair needs a maintenance regime, Life Hacks – The Essential Collection delivers insights that you didn‘t know you wanted to know. Until now.

James pricks the bubble of self-improvement literature with a light but sure-footed step on the wobbly rope-bridge of reason through a limpid atmosphere of pure bullshit. Along the way, he reinvents life-skilling in illustrated rhymes of a quality that can hurt your face.

This delightful book takes lavatory humour out of the playground and puts it firmly where it belongs: in a locked bathroom with your adolescent brother. It could be described as a multivalent epigrammatic commentary on our materialist culture, but more aptly as sparklingly silly.