Tom Campbell employs his lavish comic gifts to especially good effect in a chapter of his new novel The Planner dealing with a book launch. Actually, it’s a double book launch (to save money) featuring works as incompatible as the serious opera and Harlequinade mixed on a master’s whim in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.

We are shown the two writers — this is well-observed stuff — “beaming out indiscriminate smiles and displaying approximately the right quantities of exuberance, humility and ironic detachment”.

Tom was notably smiley too (see above) at last week’s launch at Blackwell’s of The Planner, which shows more than a touch of early Martin Amis in its depiction of a young(ish) council official wading out of his social depth in upper-echelon London.

I loved it — which it is always good (if not always usual) to be able to say concerning a book written by a friend. Tom I have known since he was very small indeed. I was his first ‘employer’ when he came here for work experience. He recalls this as a time of late arrivals and early departures — by me.

“A useful tip at things like this is to avoid the journalists and writers,” planner James is advised by smoothy mentor Felix at the launch. “Instead go for the boys and girls who work in PR. They have particular expertise in being agreeable, and the good ones tend to be highly attractive.”

This is the sort of thing I might have told Tom all those years ago. It is certainly what I thought.

The Planner, Bloomsbury, £12.99