WEIGHT RESTRICTIONS focus the mind. Hardbacks are heavy. Whether for selfimposed allowances or crueller check-in choices, here are some lighter comedy carry-ons.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime (Arrow, £7.99/offer £7.59) by P.G.Wodehouse has an especially high chortle factor. How's this for a comic entrance? “...there entered a young man of great height but lacking the width of shoulder and ruggedness of limb which make height impressive.

“Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying: ‘Don't look now, but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth'.”

Uncle Fred, the racy Earl of Ickenham, enjoys constructing apparent true-life scenarios involving confidence trickery, impersonation and romance. Earnestness of purpose is all-important in humorous writing. If characters believe something, need something, then we, as readers, suspend any loitering scepticism and fall off furniture in gleeful response.

Mistress of mirth Richmal Crompton is an accomplished “unseater”. Try William the Pirate (available second-hand from abebooks.co.uk), her sparkling 1932 collection of short stories in which she chronicles much of the absurdity and blessedness in British life. My own favourite is William and the Princess Goldilocks, where Mr Medway, consummately cross-purposed, mistakes our lateral-thinking hero for his nephew:

“How's your mother?”

“Very well, thank you,” said William.

“Very well? She told me in her last letter that she was no better at all.”

“Yes, that's what I meant. Didn't I say that? I meant to say that.”

“You seem to me to be half-witted.”

“Yes, I am,” said William, thankfully accepting this explanation:

“The doctor says I may get better some day, but just at present I am a bit half-witted.”

From the Times Archive: The 1939 review of 'Uncle Fred in the Springtime'

Victorian readers deemed JeromeK.Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (OUP, £7.99/£7.59) vulgar, but still bought it in record numbers. They also said they didn't care for its “purple passages”. Were they colour blind? Preparing for a night under canvas, our narrator embarks on an idyllic history of the riverbank: stooping Moon, quiet nooks, rustling trees, lapping water. Has he really gone all serious on us? Then lugubrious Harris says: “How about when it rained?” Ah, no. Just ineffable comic timing.

From the Times Archive: The 1968 review of 'Three Men in a Boat'

In Michael Frayn's breathtakingly funny Towards the End of the Morning (Faber, £7.99/£7.59) John Dyson is a blithe, good man - a journalist, no less. He has a chance at TV punditry in a live discussion programme. But after too long in the hospitality suite he can manage only to repeat vacuously, on air: “Extraordinarily interesting, indeed, indeed.” Now, returning from a chaotic foreign press junket, will he be in time for a second shot at celebrity status?

From the Times Archive: The 1978 review of 'Towards the End of the Morning'

Busman's holiday for me with Michael Simkins's hilarious theatrical memoir What's My Motivation? (Ebury, £8.99/£8.54). And there's plush entertainment from Gyles Brandreth's new comedy-thriller Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (John Murrary, £14.99/£13.49).

A Christopher Matthew pocketbook of verse, Now We Are 60 (And a Bit) (John Murray, £9.99/£9.49), is also in my notional knapsack: delicious social double-takes from one of our best modern humorists.

Finally, Mark Haddon's recent A Spot of Bother (Vintage, £7.99/£7.59) spotlights marriage, infidelity, same-sex relationships, ageing, nervous breakdown, fear of death. Clearly a comic novel. There's truth, humour and compassion here, as in all my choices.

Happy hols.

Martin Jarvis is an actor and director. He is currently recording the role of God in Word of Promise.

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