It is strange Trovato is one of the few humorists not included in Sarah Britten's The Art of the South African Insult, which is the wittiest book I have read for years.

The impressive Britten — I was going to call her “no mean wit” but that would be like calling the sun “warm” — has assembled quotes from most of the best South African comedic writers in a collection of pithy one-liners and longer passages, all of which are put-downs or insults.

The usual suspects are here: Barry Ronge, the inimitable David Bullard, Tom Eaton, the obnoxious Zebulon Dread, Krisjan Lemmer, the acid-tongued Lin Sampson, Hogarth and the discredited but superb Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

Britten has mined gems from not only professional humorists but also from other more generally serious writers, politicians, sportsmen, “celebrities”, artists, clerics, businessmen and ordinary South Africans who have written a letter to the press or agreed to be interviewed by the media.

An enormous variety of disparate views are arranged in 17 chapters, and the glue that binds them into a cohesive and wildly hilarious whole is supplied by Britten, who is knowledgeable, imaginative and intelligent, an excellent writer and, above all, incredibly, unbelievable and side-splittingly funny.

Britten has laid bare hitherto unknown and unexpected sides to public figures: who knew Brett Kebble was so witty? That Helen Suzman could crack a joke?

Even Roy Campbell could be amusingly snide when he wasn't composing poetry: “Beards are the only crop the Boers have ever grown without a government subsidy."

Sports, ethnicity, politics, business, religion, crime, TV and everything else, The Art of the South African Insult has a comment for nearly every topic affecting SA and should be an essential reference work, especially for speech writers. ( )