Excerpt from The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson , plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Photos of Jax and Norman in various poses were interspersed with cut-out pictures of Eric Morecambe, Ernie Wise, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, the Two Ronnies, Dave Allen, Frankie Boyle and Norman Wisdom, all radiating around a handsome, smiling man in a dapper mulberry suit. A faded Polaroid that could still make my heart creak, no matter how many times I saw it. Ah, Sadie, love, it's nice to be nice! Robert Foreman. Norman's grandfather. My father. Would-be comedy superstar. Actual alcoholic, gambler, benefit fraudster and, if we're being honest, comedy absolutely bloody nobody. Although if you were a kid at a Butlin's in the late 1980s you might have a faint memory of him trying to chat up your mother after his show.

As my eyes adjusted to a low-light focus I realized something looked different about the poster. There seemed to be a lot of crossing out, some words had been outlined more thickly than others and there was some new writing on it that was a lot fainter than the original. I tried squinting to get a better look, but in the end I had to drag myself out of Norman's warm hollow and go over to the wall to make it out properly.

When the extent of the changes to Jax and Norman's Five-Year Plan became clear, my heart was just too smart for its own good and attempted a double reverse spin before crashing to the floor.

Excerpted from The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson . Copyright © 2021 by Julietta Henderson . Excerpted by permission of Mira. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.