I read Catherine Deveny’s previous book, It’s Not My Fault They Print Them on a 12-hour train journey from Melbourne to Adelaide. The other passengers glanced worriedly at the crazy lady (me) guffawing and knee-slapping and murmuring ‘yes!’ and ‘absolutely!’, but I had a grand old time. I don’t always agree with CD, but when I do, I really, REALLY do. (She’s spot-on when it comes to 4WDs, private schools, Sam Newman and Home and Away, for instance.)

And when I don’t, I generally enjoy the experience of reading her argument anyway. This year’s offering is another ripper. Some examples: she describes The Farmer Wants a Wife as ‘a bachelor and spinster’s ball set in Saudi Arabia’. Judge Judy ‘is a total mole but in a good way’. After a few episodes, Lost made her feel ‘like a 19-year-old guy who’d been dating a girl for two months who wouldn’t put out’. And that’s just the TV stuff … There’s also a wonderful piece written before the 2007 federal election about voting for the sake of the not-so-well-off rather than the hip pocket that I think is one of the best things Deveny has ever written. Not particularly funny – but spot-on.