WHAT BOOK would comedian and presenter Julian Clary take to a desert island?

. . . are you reading now?

Babes In The Wood by Graham Bartlett and Peter James. I have been an avid reader of true crime all my life. It is considered a little sordid and grubby by some and, in bookshops, it’s invariably displayed on the bottom shelf in a dusty corner. But I like it.

So unliterary and to the point: no room for flowery prose when discussing the depths of human depravity. This book deals with the 32-year fight to convict the murderer of two nine-year-old girls who went out to play on their Brighton estate.

Graham Bartlett is a former senior detective, so the tone is stoical and gruff, which only makes the facts all the more heartbreaking.

. . . would you take to a desert island?

I wouldn’t want a ‘proper’ book as I’d be too busy building a raft to return to the real world, so I’ll take The Ultimate Insult, which is a collection of put-downs and bon mots compiled by Maria Leach.

I found it years ago in a second-hand book shop and always have it to hand to dip in and out of. Clever words brighten the mood and sharpen the mind. It is divided into handy topics, like relationships, music, politics and (best of all) inflammatory.

So something for every occasion. A few of my favourites are: ‘All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.’ (Evelyn Waugh). ‘She’s one of the few actresses in Hollywood who looks more animated in photographs than she does on the screen.’ (Michael Medved on Raquel Welch.)

. . . first gave you the reading bug?

I read Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles when I was 12 (below, Gemma Arterton in the TV adaptation). I liked big, doorstop books that I could lose myself in on my long journey home from school, epic stories you thought would never end.

I read all of Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, but glazed over when it came to Dickens: too many grubby urchins and sinister types with silly names for my taste. I liked a beautiful, wan heroine wafting through bucolic settings and coming to a sticky end.

I remember getting off the 65 bus in Kingston with tears streaming down my face. Then, as I entered my teens, I developed a taste for more arch, snappy writing and discovered the joys of Muriel Spark and Fay Weldon. Wisdom and wit — ideal for an impressionable youth finding his way in the world.

. . . left you cold?

Not cold so much as lukewarm. I’ve just finished Mark Griffin’s All That Heaven Allows, a biography of Rock Hudson’s closeted life in Hollywood. Shame they didn’t call it He Knew What He Liked.

He appeared in dozens of films but was equally busy having affairs with blond, muscular men. Only a handful of his films are any good and the same might be said for his lovers.

God love him, though: despite his stardom he was, by all accounts, kind and caring and up for a laugh. The author seems so caught up being meticulous and thorough, though, he gets a bit boring. Do we really need to know the details of the plot for A Gathering Of Eagles? I don’t. I wanted more gay smut, but maybe that’s just me.

Julian Clary’s fifth children’s book The Bolds Go Wild is out in paperback (Anderson Press £6.99).