Comic actor, director, writer and general dapper man about town Richard Ayoade’s humour occupies a unique territory. He’s a perma-bemused, quietly underwhelmed presence in a world that favours the narcissist, the loud, the interminably sharp-elbowed. His pithy introversion, happily, extends to his books, too. In essence, he follows oddball performers who create their own worlds within worlds, such as Ivor Cutler, Vic and Bob, and Noel Fielding.

Afterthoughts gently skewers the Tik Tok generation’s need for Hallmark card toxic positivity, served up in bitesize chunks. So it lists, after a spot of typically droll navel-gazing, witty rebuttals to the kind of trite aphorisms that have become everyday bugbears of his: and most likely the reader, too.

They’re mostly hilarious gems, ruminations that every overthinker will easily identify with. Among my favourites are the ones that land almost like early Woody Allen one-liners (his “early, funny” work before the scandals) that are based around death (“medical check-ups should be called ‘pre-mortems’”) and personality types (“people bemoan passive aggression. Which is totally up to them”).

It also extends to family, relationship advice, religion, the entertainment industry and the distracting influence of social media. If I believed in the deployment of clichés, I’d say Ayoade is “relatable”, but I will simply say instead that he’s just a brilliant mind, as smart as his trademark mod suits. Seriously funny.