Meanwhile Dylan’s football team keeps being beaten 0–11, as he stands disconsolately on the wing waiting vainly to receive the ball.

His ex-wife has taken up with a new man, a motivational speaker and indefatigable charity fundraiser to boot; he seems to constantly disappoint his long-suffering son; and at work he is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and management jargon. This is the humdrum, unglamorous side of poetry that is often hidden from ordinary members of the public.Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is the most original novel you will read this or any year. With more than 400,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community.

Whilst that goes by the wayside some days, we are still treated to many poems of the very clever and mostly rhyming variety that I love. His poems have delighted people on Twitter for several years, and now he's treated us to this brilliant novel . In fact I rather regretted reading it over just a couple of days - it would have been better to take longer and saver it. A welcome reminder of the joy to be had when you put yourself in the hands of someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative .At work, burdened by spreadsheets and corporate speak, he feels his self-esteem thinning by the day: “I spend my time multi-slacking … slowly fading into jobsolescence. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. He has also published a collection of football poetry, 50 Ways to Score a Goa l (Macmillan, 2021), and his acclaimed poem Refugees (Palazzo, 2019) has been made into an illustrated book for children. In this case the person hurt is not the hero clown (who is seems blissfully unaware of how dysfunctional he is).

I laughed all the way through it; the perfect antidote to the strange and anxious times we are living through. Fragilities, lack of confidence and a serious custard cream habit conspire to make his life less than ideal, but along the way we see that human relationships are the important stuff of life. Only in poetry does he find refuge and relief, interlarding diary entries with his mischievous verses, some parodies of pop songs (REM, Bee Gees, Blur), some of actual poems, nearly all of them quotable.

Lai gan jaukajā dzejas klubā ir tikpat jaukā Liza, neizbēgt arī no savas darvas piles, un to sauc Tobijs Salts - dzejnieks, kura vēl neiznākušais krājums jau ir nodēvēts par gada dzejas grāmatu (un no kura pāris dzejas rindām jums jau smadzenes saiet ķīselī). Daily Mirror * Bilston has perfected his comic voice, which brings to mind a bitter man-child with spades of misanthropic charm and a dash of Alan Partridge-esque pedantry. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part hilarious description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a stunningly original novel from Twitter sensation, Brian Bilston. It has a sardonic edge that really appeals to my sense of humour and it's just a pleasure from start to finish.

Photograph: Alamy View image in fullscreen Diary of a Somebody focuses on Brian, a 45-year-old sad sack with a yen for custard creams. From office politics to bin day; searing jealousies to procrastination; and, of course, heart-break; we are taken through a year where Brian seems to be his own worst enemy. Un skaisti par to, kā bieži vien vieglāk ir rakstīt, nekā runāt, kā reizēm vārdu ir par daudz, kā var nepietikt ar visu gudro vārdu zināšanu.

The main character Brian, actually was a bit of a male version Bridget Jones, except Bridget was likeable. The hero is one of life's ineffectual losers and he is by turns infuriating, embarrassing, pitiable and engaging and the reader shares his ups and (mostly) downs. Most people's diaries would be quite boring I suspect, but Brian's life is just so fraught with calamity and misunderstanding that the banal becomes interesting, even though it's not dramatic. Read this novel in short bursts, pausing to savour its individual brilliancies * Guardian * Bilston is the greatest English anti-hero of our time. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is the most original novel you will read this year.