In his retirement at the Vatican City, emeritus pope Benedict XVI is hard at work on his magnum opus: a high-school comedy screenplay.

At a grimy pub in North London, a doctoral researcher is abducted by gangsters peddling William Wordsworth’s handwritten account of drug-fuelled sex orgies.

In the West African state of Benin, a politician’s daughter inherits a large cash sum which she can only launder with the help of a random Englishman sourced on the internet.

With twenty-one deliciously observed, gloriously mischievous short stories – some previously narrated on BBC Radio 4 or published in literary magazines, others completely new – Peter Bradshaw explores the boundary between the plausible and the absurd, often with a laugh-out-loud gag up his sleeve.

Amid the playfulness, he has an enduring warmth and sympathy for every character, however hapless. He offers pinpricks of light in a dark sky of confusion and pain.