What’s the strangest thing you’ve heard people say on the street, in a tube, on the bus, anywhere in London? As I’ve usually got my nose buried in a book on the tube, I usually miss what people are talking about, but luckily for me plenty of others are busy taking notes and then tapping the questions, phrases, sayings and bon mots into Twitter on their iPhones to send to Time Out, which publishes them every week in the ‘Word on the Street’ section. This little book is a collection of some of the best – and when I say best, I mean most bizarre, ranging from ‘White bread is like the ninja of the food world. It’s a silent killer’ to ‘Clearly, there’s a reason nostrils are the same size as fingers’.

They’re surreal, rude and, sometimes, probably certifiable, but definitely compelling, which is what makes the ‘Word on the Street’ section of the magazine the turn-to page it is. This little book is probably ideal toilet or bathroom reading (and also very useful if, like me, you’re running behind on the Goodreads Reading Challenge) but at £6.99 it is really over priced. £5 would be more like it, and £2.99 would be ideal: there are, after all not that many pages (rather craftily, the pages aren’t numbered so without sitting down and counting you won’t know how many) but in terms of pence per word, only something like Where the Wild Things Are is worse value (although the Wild Things has the better pictures!). So, I’d advise sticking to the magazine – now a freebie – rather than paying for the book.