Obviously, the best and funniest gift book out this Christmas is my own Still a Bit of Snap in the Celery (Abacus, £16.99), about the horrors and delights of being 60, but I am far too humble and modest to mention it, so I won’t.

Very nearly as good is Bob Cryer’s Barry Cryer: Same Time Tomorrow? (Bloomsbury, £20), a timely biography of his father, the legendary comedian and comic writer who died at a great age last year. I knew Barry a little –I used to go up to Hatch End, where he lived, with my friend Mark Mason and meet him in his local pub – and I can confirm he was every bit as kind, generous and, above all, funny as everyone says he was. Here was a man who could only remember falling out with one fellow comic, Jimmy Tarbuck, and even Tarby he eventually made up with. One afternoon, as we sat outside in the freezing cold sipping lager, Barry told one of his many parrot jokes, which I shall repeat here, even though you have heard it before (as everyone always has).

A woman walks into a pet shop and espies a beautiful parrot sitting resplendent on a perch. ‘How much?’ she asks the manager, who says: ‘Twenty quid.’ ‘That doesn’t seem very much,’ she says, and the manager explains: ‘He’s got previous. He used to live in a brothel. As a result, he has rather a colourful vocabulary.’ ‘Never mind,’ says the woman, ‘I’ll have him.’ She takes the parrot home in a cage and unveils him in her front room. ‘New place,’ says the parrot. ‘Nice.’ Her two daughters walk into the room. ‘New place, new girls,’ says the parrot. ‘Nice.’ Finally, her husband enters the room. ‘Hello, Keith,’ saysthe parrot.

I believe this to be one of the greatest jokes ever written, and I told Barry so at the time. We then had a long, technical discussion about why it could only have been Keith. I thought Colin might have been a possibility, but Baz, the great comedy technician, dismissed this out of hand. The book isn’t particularly slick or well written – Barry was a much better writer than his son is – but it captures his comic persona perfectly and is a fine tribute.

The trivia book of the season is Everything to Play For: The QI Book of Sports by James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski (Faber, £14.99), a tirelessly researched and remarkably comprehensive collection of daft facts and anecdotes about some of the most pointless activities known to mankind. Among the revelations are that it was David Attenborough (in his role as controller of BBC2) who decreed that tennis balls should henceforth be yellow (easier to see on colour TV, apparently); why Egyptian athletes had their spleens removed (they thought it made them run faster); and that until the late 20th century many competitors in the Tour de France smoked during the race (they thought it opened up their lungs, and it did, to lung cancer). Both authors are long-standing QI elves, who have discovered that slapping your teammates’ bums does improve performance, although no one really knows why. The book is magnificent, and will happily kill several afternoons for sports fans of all ages and temperaments.

For those who prefer to sit still and do as little as possible there’s The Hidden Language of Cats by Sarah Brown (Michael Joseph, £16.99). This is an update of Desmond Morris’s perpetually useful Catwatching, with not as many wonderful pictures of cats but numerous fascinating stories and curious insights into their behaviour. Dr Brown is an animal behavioural scientist who has spent her career looking at and thinking about cats, which is time well spent, if you ask me. As is any time reading this wonderful book, which should not be left in the company of dog-lovers.

Cartoon books are often funny but rarely useful. Yoga for Stiff Birds by Marion Deuchars (Skittledog, £10) is an exception. It is a collection of yoga positions all drawn in Deuchars’ distinct, almost primitive style, and includes such poses as Happy Baby, Half Lord of the Fishes, Locust, Upward-Facing Dog, Reverse Warrior and the very useful Corpse. It’s a book for beginners and for ‘others who have already started their yoga journey’. ‘It’s a book for birds of all feathers,’ Deuchars clarifies, trying desperately to maximise sales.

Books are now emerging from podcasts, which makes sense if the podcasts are any good. Happily, Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating podcast, in which she interviews celebrities about the infra dig things they have always loved eating, is very good indeed; and so is the cheery accompanying book of the same title (Faber, £20), whose front cover features a photo of Grace in curlers that are not curlers at all but mini-Battenburg cakes. After devouring an unconscionable amount of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, she writes: ‘Despite being fully aware that there are better chocolates in the world, remind yourself that you would be prepared to die in a duel to defend Dairy Milk’s honour.’ True, dat. Excuse me a moment while I pop out for an emergency Twirl…