My family and other disasters

'Hi Dad.' 'Who's calling, please?' 'It's Lucy ...Your daughter.' 'Ah, yes.

Which one are you again? The one that reads or the one that shops?' For Lucy Mangan family life has never exactly been a bed of roses.

With parents so parsimonious that if they had soup for a meal they would decline an accompanying drink (soup is a drink), and a grandmother who refused to sit down for 82 years so that she wouldn't wear out the sofa, Lucy spent most of her childhood oscillating between extreme states of anxiety.

Fortunately, this hasn't affected her ability to write, and in this, her first collection of "Guardian" columns, she shares her hilarious take on everything from family relations to the credit crunch and why organized sport should be abolished.