The year's funniest book - and the psychic who predicted it.

Photo courtesy of Amazon.co.uk

One of my favourite stories from this year's Hay Festival concerns a talented psychic and the first woman chair of that hallowed institution the National Gallery.

Hannah Rothschild, a member of the banking family, has revealed that a psychic persuaded her to write The Improbability of Love which has been named joint winner of the Bolinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, along with Paul Murray for The Mark and the Void. The award is given annually to the best book to capture the spirit of PG Wodehouse.

Quoted in The Times newspaper today Ms Rothschild says she was advised to visit 'a wonderful woman called Ivy' when she needed some relationship advice. When they had finished the psychic predicted that she would write a prize-winning book with a heroine called Annie and that she would see a hill covered in wild violets.

Not long afterwards the author went for a walk in Devon and did, indeed, see wild violets. 'And then I thought, bloody hell I am going to have to do it,' she says.  'So I sat down that day and started to write a book about Annie.'

Described as both a satire of the art world and a romance, the book was also shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016.

'If anyone wants Ivy's number I've still got it,' was the author's parting shot to festival-goers.

Now that's what I call a sense of humour.