‘There are things you can do to have more fun in life,’ says the author, sitting in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall.

Against the odds, and seemingly without any coherent plan, Jason and Dev set about finding this woman from Charlotte Street, starting out by developing her photographs and examining them for evidence.

It’s all a bit depressing really – unless you have a bit of the romantic in you. He’s writing sarcastic reviews for London Now, a rip-off of the free papers you get on the Underground and probably don’t read. He’s living with his dreamer best mate Dev, who runs a retro gaming shop no one ever visits. Jason has been recently ditched by Sarah, now happily engaged to Gary, who represents everything Jason hates. Or at least she would be if he didn’t sort-of, kind-of, not-really try to track her down. The idea is simple: Jason Priestley (no, not the one from Beverly Hills 90210, though that is a relevant detail) is standing on London’s Charlotte Street one day when he finds himself holding a disposable camera belonging to a woman he glimpses for a moment before she gets into a taxi and is gone from his life forever. Which is the central conceit of Charlotte Street, cheekily tag-lined, ‘a heart-warming everyday tale of boy stalks girl … ’ The stalking is pretty mild. In fact, it’s more likely to result in humiliation, confusion or, if you’re really lucky, love. It doesn’t have to be big or grand or lead to riches, fame or fortune. The main theme in both his non-fiction and, now, fiction is all about ‘seizing the moment’, whatever that moment is. Some of these one-off projects appear to be undertaken for, frankly, a bit of a laugh, but there are underlying themes that hint at Wallace’s philosophy, many of which resurface in a slightly different form in his first novel. Until now, Wallace has perhaps been best known for writing a series of informal, off-hand, not-really guides for the modern bloke such as Yes Man (saying ‘yes’ to everything for a year) and Join Me (accidentally becoming the leader of a cult that believes in random acts of kindness). That is, unless your typical debut novelist has, among other things, already written seven successful non-fiction books, one of which has been turned into a film starring Jim Carrey, and who also presents the morning show on XFM in London to pass the time. Danny Wallace isn’t your typical debut novelist.

Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace