In Gig, poet and professional northerner Simon Armitage brings together a series of comic sketches about himself, his family and his relationship to music. Armitage recounts gigs he's missed, the Siouxsie and the Banshees birthday cake his mum made him as a teenager, and the birth of his "midlife crisis" band. By music, we're mainly talking white-boy post-punk and jangly guitar rock; and the book is as much an autobiography as an ode to music. Its landscape is of the Fall and compilation tapes alongside poetry gigs and research into Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Armitage comes across as a profoundly amiable bloke with an extremely entertaining ability to dissect his own airs and graces. Take, for example, the torturous anecdote about coming across a copy of his own book in a secondhand bookshop's bargain bin, and then opening the cover to see the words "To Mum and Dad" in his own handwriting. All of which makes Gig the ideal gift for the sensitive yet sarcastic post-punk in your life.