style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">David Nobbs is the author of 19 novels, has adapted several of them for television and is one of Britain’s best and most venerable comic writers. But he will always be known, whether he likes it or not, for Grot, hippopotamuses, CJ and “a bit of a cock-up on the catering front”. Nobbs didn’t get where he is today without Reggie Perrin.