Jax reckons it’s the same with a joke. Because you’ve got to know where the punch line is before you set off, otherwise you’re just going to end up going round and round in circles, looking for a way out. And there’s nothing too funny about someone wandering round and round in circles, although there are probably some exceptions to that and I think maybe Dave Allen is one of them.

Mum says there isn’t anyone else on the planet whose brain works the way that Jaxy’s does, and I’m pretty sure she’s right. I reckon it’s because he’s the coolest guy on this or any other planet, but he says it’s because the inside of his head is just like a big old ideas factory and he wouldn’t be able to stop them coming out even if he tried. Which, luckily, he never has, or else we wouldn’t have had some of the most excellent fun ever.

Like when I suggested we should have a comedy DVD marathon so we could work out once and for all who our favorites were. Jax said that if we were going to do it, then we had to make a plan and do it right, and that’s how he invented DVD Dynamite Saturday Night. We made a proper folded-up paper program with a list of the DVDs we were going to watch and in what exact order we’d play them, and even the times for when it was intermission so we could go for a wee and make cheese on toast and hot chocolates and stuff. Then we got dressed up in our comedy outfits, because Jax said that was called getting into character, and we even made a ticket with Admit One: DVD Dynamite Saturday Night on it so we could invite Mum to come, as well. And she did, and it was the best Saturday night ever, even though we had so much fun we totally forgot to decide who we liked the best and now I’m never going to know who would have got Jaxy’s vote.

Another time we were just sitting in my room talking about what cheese we reckoned was the best for melting and kapow! Jax came up with the Ultimate Cheese-Off Experiment plan. We made a banner out of an old pillowcase with UCOE 2018 on it because the whole name didn’t fit, and Mum took us to Tesco’s and we bought loads of different kinds of cheese. Even the expensive ones. Then Jax made a list with the names of them and five columns labeled “gooey,” “gooier,” “gooiest,” “rubbish” and “totally rubbish” to put our ticks and crosses in. It turned out he needn’t have bothered with the last two, because they stayed totally empty, but then we ended up writing a really cool joke about never meeting a cheese we didn’t like. So that was, like, two ideas out of the factory for the price of one.

A lot Jax’s best ideas pop into his head when he’s supposed to be doing other things, like homework or sleeping or taking out the bins for his mum. Or watching the One Show Children in Need special, which is when out of nowhere he goes, Norman, I reckon we need to make a mega-genius-super-supreme comedy plan so we know where we’re going. And all I knew was that if Jax was going somewhere, I wanted to be with him when he got there.