Adam Kay trained as a doctor and worked for the NHS for six years before quitting and turning his experiences into the bestselling memoir This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, which he later adapted into a Bafta-winning BBC Two series. His subsequent adult non-fiction books were also bestsellers, and he has become a leading children’s book author since publishing his first children’s title, Kay’s Anatomy, in 2020. Last year he released his first novel, the biting, hospital-set thriller A Particularly Nasty Case which is out in paperback next week. Kay is also an acclaimed standup comedian and his 2023 show Undoctored was the biggest-selling show of the Edinburgh fringe. He lives in Oxfordshire with his husband and two children.

TV recommendations from friends are always risky – if they think FBoy Island is any good, what does it say about their taste in people? My friend Megan has gone way up in my estimation, however, by switching me onto Rooster, from the creator of Scrubs. Steve Carell stars as Greg Russo, author of a series of books even trashier than mine about a playboy detective. Greg lands the gig as writer-in-residence at the same university where his daughter Katie, played by the brilliant (and British!) Charly Clive, is a professor. The show sees him get caught up in her marriage dramas, as well as his own academic misadventures, and manages to be simultaneously a tender family portrait and an absurd campus comedy. The scene where Katie chucks her husband’s prized first edition of War and Peace into the fire and accidentally burns the house down (spoilers soz) is an all-time classic.

Now that wifi has infiltrated planes and the Underground, there are few places left where I can be truly off-grid. I’ve been visiting the Isles of Scilly for a couple of decades, my love for them far outlasting any other relationship in my life. Access is either a lurching three-hour ferry ride or a terrifying half-hour flight – either way you’re close to vomiting for one reason or another. But once there, it’s a heaven you don’t have to go through the faff of dying to get into. There are hardly any cars, the internet doesn’t really work that well, and Tresco, our favourite of the islands, makes the Garden of Eden feel a bit pedestrian. Leave your dongle at home.

My coolest friend, Jen (sorry, Megan, but did you ever work for Banksy?), introduced me to the talents of Nigerian artist Slawn. His work is big, bold pop art inspired by graffiti and murals. I was invited to a private exhibition at Slawn’s studio where he created incredible works live as we all watched. I’ve never seen art appear before my eyes – other than Tony Hart and Rolf Harris on TV – and we all stood there jaws gaping, as if he was turning Volvic into Viognier. You heard it here first. Unless you’re cooler than me – most people are – in which case you probably knew about him already.

Tragedy! When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on etc – one of my favourite restaurants in London is closing at the start of next year. Dinner built its menu from historic dishes dating back to the days of Richard II, which I’m sure is all very interesting and everything, but the main thing is that the food is sensational – the best item on the menu being tipsy cake: spit-roasted pineapple, with brioche and brandy. And even better than that, there are three cards on the table and you choose one of them to determine how much description you want from the service staff, from absolute silence all the way up to being told the star sign of the cow you’re eating. I choose silence, obviously. Tell them I sent you (but do not send me the bill).

I’m one of those friends who forgets to text back, rarely logs on to social media, and is generally triple-booked. Luckily, I work in the media, so I can keep up with a lot of my pals by listening to their podcasts. Three Bean Salad is hosted by three comedians: Mike Wozniak, yet another former doctor-turned-standup and a good friend since my med-school days; Henry Paker, who creates incredible illustrations for my kids’ books; and Ben Partridge, who I don’t know that well but I’m sure is a lovely man. The premise is pretty simple – listeners submit a different random topic every week, from James Bond to moving house, and they discuss it. Often vaguely; and sometimes they get distracted by their multiverse of tangents and fail to at all. Luckily they are some of the funniest people in the country, giving their show the highest gag count in the business. I do sometimes text them after I listen to say well done, which more than makes up for failing to make plans with them in real life.

A Particularly Nasty Case by Adam Kay is out now in hardback, ebook, and audiobook, and will be published in paperback on 2 July by Orion Books