In 2017, actor Helen Lederer launched the Comedy Women in Print prize across the UK and Ireland. Her aim? To redress the balance of how few women had received literary prizes for their wit. She noted that, in 18 years of the annual Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, only three women – Helen Fielding, Marina Lewycka and Hannah Rothschild – had won an award, compared to 16 men. Lederer of course recognises that humour is subjective, “one person’s joke is another person’s groan”.

However, the award’s present and past long lists are an excellent source of heartwarming fiction suggestions. Recently long-listed are Irish authors Michelle Gallen, Marian Keyes and Sophie Kinsella, while this year’s winner is Reasons to be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe. Stibbe made her name with the autobiographical Love, Nina – a collection of letters she sent home while working as a nanny in north London, where neighbours included famous literary names like Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Michael Frayn. Reasons to be Cheerful is her third novel about teenager Lizzie Vogel. Set in 1980, it sees Lizzie leave her “alcoholic, nymphomaniacal, novel-writing mother” to start a new job as a dental assistant, where love, lust and social angst prevail.

Colleagues in THE GLOSS nominated their favourite funny fiction. Editor Sarah McDonnell recommends Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop (1938), which begins with a case of mistaken identity when a shy, retiring columnist of rural affairs (with a particular interest in voles) is sent to cover a war in Africa for Fleet Street newspaper The Daily Beast. The reluctant foreign correspondent finds himself in all sorts of farcical situations, while in London, strings are being pulled (mostly from the bedchamber) by society hostess Mrs Algernon Stitch. Satire at its most clever; still fresh and funny, almost 80 years on.

For Síomha Connolly, Digital Editor, one book that always makes her smile is the children’s picture book We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen. “My sister and I came across this ten years ago in a Boston bookstore and couldn’t stop laughing. I loved it, but put it back on the shelf. My sister snuck back to the shop later in the trip and presented it to me on Christmas morning. Now, whenever I look at it, it brings me joy.”

Beauty Editor Sarah Halliwell admits she enjoys dark humour, found in biographies such as the second instalment of The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968 – 2011 by William Feaver – the work-hard, play-hard life of an entirely uncompromising man entirely dedicated to art. “There’s a ruthlessness to many of the things Freud says and does and it’s fascinating to immerse yourself in this life less ordinary.” In the same vein, Sarah found Maggie O’Farrell’s I am, I am, I am to be a truly inspiring and uplifting read, though it might sound the opposite – describing as it does 17 occasions on which the author came perilously close to death. “A testament to the strength of human spirit, resilience and, in some cases, sheer luck, it’s a brilliantly simple premise for a memoir that encompasses a woman’s fierce life, chilling the reader with some extraordinary close shaves. In places, it’s like a bracing swim in the Irish sea – reading this you really know you’re alive.”

Past and present novels which raise endorphin levels for me include Stella Gibbons’ provincial, pitch-perfect parody Cold Comfort Farm (1932). The central heroine is orphan Flora Poste, who tries to organise the lives and loves of her intractable rural relatives, when she decamps to the country. Meanwhile Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a laugh-aloud funny and poignant novel I’ve read several times. It champions small acts of kindness and the importance of friendship in a world where people are increasingly isolated (or indeed self-isolating). I can’t wait for Honeyman’s next novel due to be published this year.