There are more serious issues dealt with in the book (dementia, child pornography, gay couple having a child), but these are all handled with the lightest of touches so that the book never becomes bogged down but rather stays entertaining and gossipy. Carol discovers that Declan’s past is full of secrets and the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance.

So when he develops early onset dementia, his children lose no time in selling the family home from under her, forcing her back to her parents' home. Carol is devastated as she knows for a fact Declan never wanted to sell the house, but shockingly she finds Killan is the executor of the estate and has made this decision. Fast forward several years and Declan is now in a home and appears to be suffering from Alzheimer's. Declan is soon moved into a nursing home, his untrusting and clearly messed-up children booting Carol out of their house so they can secure a quick advance on their inheritance.It's wonderfully funny, yet a bit sad, filled with secrets galore, twists and turns in family dynamics and to what lengths a family will go to protect each other. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. While much of the exciting plot was imagined, the claustrophobic world of small-town Co Cork was faithfully rendered. There’s some really nice stuff here about the ache of watching someone rapidly decline, childhood trauma and the suffocating meaning-of-life decisions about family, relationships and work. An unexpected twist, about halfway, kept me glued to the story and attempting to figure out who it was and how everyone involved was going to fix the mess they found themselves in.

He then secured a prime time slot on Channel 4 with his chat shows So Graham Norton and V Graham Norton. Pettiness and small-minded attitudes are infectious, and behaviour is controlled by anxious ‘what will the neighbours think?

The main issue at hand within this novel is that of elder financial abuse, and Norton shows the chilling ease at which this can be accomplished with little to no intervention from authorities.