I am a Hay virgin, but I am making up for lost time by presenting a daily podcast for the Guardian as well as discussing my book at a session that was scheduled rather unpromisingly for 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning.

Appearing alongside me was the historian David Kynaston whose book Austerity Britain has been lathered in lavish praise. When I learnt I was going to be on with Kynaston I was at first crushed at the realisation that absolutely nobody in the room would be there specially to hear my ruminations on life in 1980s Luton. It then stuck me that once the lure of a heavyweight such as Kynaston had tempted the Hay faithful I would at least have a captive audience who would have no option but to hear me reflect on Springsteen concerts I have enjoyed through the years.

I needn't have worried. In the more than capable hands of Peter Florence, Hay supremo and chair of the session, Kynaston's book and mine were the starting point for a fascinating and rather thoughtful discussion on what it means to be British. Kynaston's book examines the immediate years after the second world war whereas mine is located largely in the 70s and 80s; his is monumental in its scope and mine is deliberately intimate. But both look, in part at least, at the formation of British identity and both make use of personal diaries.

Having spent the past four years working on my book, revisiting my childhood, re-reading my diaries from the time to try and render the past into living breathing prose, it is a curious experience to be speaking about it to an audience. Even more fascinating were the questions. The alliterative subtitle to my childhood memoir is "race, religion, rock'n'roll"; those attending the session were inevitably rather more interested in discussing race and religion and rather less bothered about rock'n'roll.

As well as the predictable questions about the cricket test and the fall-out from 9/11 and 7/7 there were more surprising inquiries. My favourite was from a man at the back who addressed me as "the man in stripes" because of my sweater and wanted to know, given that I had spoken at length about my father and Bruce Springsteen, whether I had any women in my life. I began to try and answer the question by mentioning my mother and Margaret Thatcher, but ultimately concluded that no answer would do justice to the surreal simplicity of the question.

Although I had modest expectations, in the end the session went extraordinarily well; the audience were not expecting, I suspect, that a talk that encompassed British Muslim identity and the threat of racial segregation could actually also be entertaining. But just as my book is a witty, warm and affectionate depiction of childhood I was keen to ensure that was also the tone to the session. So when Peter Florence asked me to talk about 9/11 and 7/7 my response was instant: "Honestly I was nowhere in the vicinity," and later when he asked about the impact that My Beautiful Landerette had on me as a teenage boy I was honest enough to admit that at the time I had been too busy watching Rocky IV.

It might seem slightly facetious but there is a serious intent behind the humour which is that one doesn't need to be a polemicist to make a point. Even in the book I was careful not to leap onto a soapbox with any "why I as a Muslim think ... " hectoring as it is far better to tell ones story and let others draw their own conclusions.

During the signing session afterwards I talked to some of those attending the session. There were a few Asians who had bought the book, but most of the people in the line were white. This was deeply gratifying, as were the reasons why they were buying the book. For some it was Bruce Springsteen, others because they were interested in the general topic of Britishness but the vast majority said because the session had made them laugh and made them think the book would be an entertaining read. More than one person claimed they were buying it because of my wit, which I thought was rather endearing; one man told me that he was impressed by my "impeccable middle-class accent". This, I assumed, was sarcasm.

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