WHAT BOOK would comedian and writer Robert Webb take to a desert island? 

…are you reading now?

Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking. It’s a memoir based on her 2008 one-woman show. I would recommend this if you’re having trouble settling down with anything hefty right now. I know I am.

She was the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, as well as briefly married to Paul Simon: there’s no shortage of Hollywood gossip, but it’s all delivered in a generous, witty and forgiving style.

I’ve also got Philip Larkin’s Collected Poems by my bed. There are many here that I don’t know and reading Larkin is always a great pleasure, especially at the moment.

…would you take to a desert island?

I already feel sorry for whatever book I choose because if I’m stuck with just one then I’m going to end up resenting it.

But if I’m allowed a single volume containing all the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy stories by Douglas Adams then I’ll take that. The world he creates is endlessly inventive but also utterly rooted in human foibles. Specifically the foibles of British people who lived in Islington in the 1980s.

You don’t especially have to like science-fiction — the books are traditional comic novels and owe much more to P.G. Wodehouse than to H.G. Wells. Yes, I think I would be all right on my island for a while in the permanently baffled company of Arthur Dent.

…first gave you the reading bug?

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Not a startlingly original choice, this, but I think it was the occasion as much as my enjoyment of the story.

I have a vivid memory of being alone in my grandparents’ little house and reading the final chapters of this book.

I couldn’t have been much older than nine and I probably remember it because it made me feel very grown-up to be left alone, sitting there on the ‘settee’ with the standard lamp over my shoulder and the TV turned off.

I think this might have been the book where I felt I’d taken a step into a wider world — despite Lewis’s view of childhood which seems to be oddly static.

Still, I liked the bit where Aslan came roaring back to life even though I failed to notice any Christian allegory and was mainly in it for the swordfights.

…left you cold?

I’ve a feeling I should now say something showboatingly wise about how you shouldn’t dismiss books just because you don’t understand them. You know the sort of thing? ‘Only boring people are bored’?

Well, I’ve never believed it so let’s get stuck in to Beowulf. What a drag. I had to read this at university and hated it. Same for all medieval lyrics apart from Chaucer. Absolute crock. So there.

Come Again by Robert Webb is published this week by Canongate, £16.99.