Tommy Sheridan

His parents, Ivan Moss observes early on in Unhappy-Go-Lucky, Ian Pattison's fourth novel, were typically Scottish: "my father was bipolar and my mother was a martyr." And with that bracing aperçu we're off into a funny, tender, observant story of Moss's relationship with his widowed mother Kathleen as – irascible, chain-smoking and, understandably, afraid – she faces up to the lung cancer that her lifelong addiction to cigarettes has brought about.