David Nobbs was a British novelist and television writer who died last year. He is most famous for a novel called The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, published in the mid-70s, which was made into a TV sitcom that became so successful it sadly eclipsed the reputation of the original novel. In this book he created a kind of mixture of melancholy and satire which was very influential on my own work. He also found a kind of poetry, as well as wild comedy, in the mundane details of British suburban life. He wrote 17 novels in all, and we became good friends in the last few years of his life.