If you’ve ever perused the kiddywink section of a bookshop, you’ve almost certainly come across the “That’s Not My…” series of books. If not, let me explain to you the basic plot of every one.

A mouse (the unnamed protagonist of the series) sets out to find a thing. On the way he find several things of the same class as the thing he wants to find, but each featuring some flaw which immediately identifies to the painstakingly exacting mouse that this thing isn’t the thing that he wanted. Usually the flaw is texture based, and the picture accompanying the text ingeniously incorporates a patch which exhibits the properties which the mouse finds so abhorrent. The patch is very tactile, and teaches small children valuable lessons about poking and prodding their grubby fingers at everything valuable you own.

Eventually the nameless, obsessive mouse finds the thing he was looking for, and lives happily ever after. Presumably until the next time he mislays one of his many possessions.

The original That’s Not My book was about puppies. People obviously suspended disbelief about a mouse owning a puppy, and it sold so well it spawned a never ending series. There’s now an entire floor of my local Waterstones dedicated to just That’s Not My books.

The authors obviously started running out of ideas – faced with increasing demands from the publishers – as the subjects have started getting increasingly far-fetched. My son has, I kid you not, a “That’s Not My Pirate” book. I mean, how could anybody, let alone a small mouse own a bloody pirate?

(By the way, if you own That’s Not My Pirate, the pirate with the too-glittery cutlass, he’s supposed to be gay, right?)

I can’t see them stopping producing ever more That’s Not My books. And eventually, of course, there’ll be the inevitable movie adaptation.

I can see it now. Tom Hanks as The Mouse, searching for his mysteriously vanished wife. He’s called to the morgue to identify a body. The coroner pulls back the sheet. Tom looks down. Touches the face of the cold dead mouse lying before him. Suddenly gasps with relief…

“That’s not my wife! Her nose is too bobbly!”

Madonna is a career vampire, she feeds off those of others. Just think of all the people she’s been closely involved with, and then think of what happened to their careers afterward. Britney Spears and William Orbit (remember him?) to name but two. Mere husks now. I think it’s some kind of alchemy involving the blood of African orphans.

Anyway, it has got me thinking what other classic literary works Ritchie can get his hands on after Sherlock Holmes…