Stand Up, Barry Goldman

All I'd wanted for as long as I could remember was a woman to love, a soulmate to live with in contentment for the rest of my days: friend, lover, companion, mother to our children. Time was running out: I was getting old. Next year I would be eighteen.

Barry Goldman is a sensitive boy. He's being primed to run the family business but has discovered a talent for making audiences laugh at his silly poems.

At last, he has found something that might make him attractive to girls – in particular, Harriet Fink – but there's not much call for delicate, earnest poets in the 1970s comedy world of hot-panted dolly birds and battle-axe mothers-in-law.

Then one night he sees Kris Dean on stage and understands that the world of comedy is about to change forever.

Stand Up, Barry Goldman – like Elena Ferrante, but with jokes – is the debut novel of Dave Cohen, stand-up comedian and writer best known as the creator of dozens of songs for multi-BAFTA winning hit TV show Horrible Histories, and less well known as lead singer in the world's first Jewish heavy metal band, Guns'n'Moses.

"Powerfully funny, often moving. Dave has created the Jewish Adrian Mole of alternative comedy." David Quantick