Your first choice is from London, it’s by a professor of public health, and it’s about obesity I believe?

Yes, it’s about the politics of obesity and fatness, but it also links that to our reliance on oil. There’s a lovely graph at the beginning of the book, which shows a really high correlation between how much petrol or gasoline people use in affluent countries per head and obesity. Essentially, the more petrol we use, the fatter we become – which is depressing. Although there’s a positive side to it as well, because it means that if we do wean ourselves off oil, we’re going to get thinner.

It makes sense. In the US, people often drive when they could easily walk.

I once spent a week in Santa Barbara walking, and I was frequently stopped by the police! They just assumed you must be up to no good if you were walking along the edge of the road.

Tell me more about the Roberts book.

Ian Roberts’s background is medicine – trauma surgery, in particular. That’s how he got into this. The book is about road traffic accidents and the direct harm that cars cause us. Cars are the biggest killer of older children and young adults in Britain. But he’s managed to link our over-reliance on cars not just to the immediate effect on our health, but also its long-term effects. If we manage to survive and not be hit by a car or injured as a youngster, then, if we live in a country that has reliance on petrol, we’re all, on average, a bit larger. It isn’t just that there are more fat people – it’s that the whole weight distribution moves across. What it means to be thin is never quite as thin as it used to. That’s not good for our bodies.

Ian Roberts is clearly a cycling advocate. Towards the end of the book, he gets into just how efficient travelling by bicycle is: it’s more efficient than walking. And the major problem for cycling is, of course, cars. He’s trying to work out a way in which we can move towards being healthier, thinner, and less reliant on petrol. Then there will be fewer wars around the world to get petrol.

Are the British particularly fat and unhealthy?

We are, yes. We are more obese than most people in Western Europe, although less than the average American, who does hit the obesity tops. The least obese country is Japan. People are a lot thinner in Japan, and that has to do with a lot less reliance on cars and a better public transport system. Also, a lot of walking and keeping fit, and a lot of cycling. Often people in Japan only have a single child. The mother will have a bike with a seat at the front, and the child goes in the seat. It’s normal in towns and cities not to have a car but to rely on your bike to get around. That leads to a much healthier population.

Isn’t it more their diet – eating lots of fish?

Yes, but the two are circular. You eat a better diet if you lead a healthier life. If you live in a place where you’re driving a lot – say you’re in LA, and have a long commute – you might well pull into a burger bar, get some burgers and eat them in your car in a traffic jam. These things are all connected. The Japanese could easily be as fat as the Americans. We know this, because when you take Japanese people and move them to America, they become fatter. Mexicans as well. Also, obesity within Mexico increases the nearer you get to the border with the US.

Your next book is from Glasgow. It’s by Frankie Boyle, the Scottish comedian, and the book is called My Shit Life So Far.

It’s a rude title but it does serve as a warning for what’s in the book. I put it in because there are a whole series of books by comics coming out now. These books are really insightful about life in Britain, and particularly the downsides of life, what’s unfair and unequal. They can get away with it, and they do it well, partly because they’re funny. If you’re telling lots of jokes, it’s easier to talk about what’s bad about a country without it becoming so depressing that you don’t want to read the book. Frankie Boyle’s book is about some particularly rough parts of Glasgow that he grew up in, and about the bad sides of the country. But it’s fun to read. If you want a book about the bottom end of British life that’s also fun to read, this is the one to get. It’s not the kind of heart-warming stereotype – like those books on Ireland: “We were poor but we were happy.” This is: “We were poor, we weren’t happy, but we could tell good jokes.”