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As a pre-pubescent kid in New Zealand, Tony Martin, inspired by one of his favourite comics, formed a backyard detective agency — The Three Investigators. His two reluctant school chums acted as first and second investigator; Martin in the crucial “records and research” role. Their secret hideout, a shed intoxicated by paint fumes with a “glaring lack of secret entrances”; their first mystery, the case of the missing Tupperware (Mrs Martin suspects one of the neighbours jealously hoards the container — “because it’s actual Tupperware … she knows what she’s sitting on”).

Martin’s abject nerdy-ness is not the making of his success alone. It’s that he revels in it; indeed, meticulously and hilariously details it in book form. And at the age of 45, still sporting unfashionably round Potter-esque glasses like a badge of honour, he refuses to grow up. As he writes in A Nest of Occasionals, his latest merry, unashamedly minor memoir:

“Eventually I stopped reading The Three Investigators. Some time in my early 20s, by which time it was only being published in Germany. But I never stopped dreaming of the perfect hideout. When Saddam Hussein was discovered cowering in that hole, all I recall thinking was, ‘Wow, cool hideout’.”

Martin is Australasia’s answer to David Sedaris, with his finely-tuned irony meter, devastating turn-of-phrase and frequently breathless slice-of-life hilarity. In fact, he’s more relatable: not just geographically (though learning he lived on the same Brisbane street as I once did, raiding the same video stores to feed his insatiable love of cinematic schlock, added to the fun), but because you know it’s almost certainly real. Sedaris freely admits embellishment, whereas Martin has no need — he simply spins his brand of bitter-sweet comedy from the most insipid occasions.

I’m a proud member of a cult that grows even now, more than two decades after his Australian TV debut. He remains arousingly unattractive: the less popular but exceedingly more talented member of his tango with Mick Molloy; director of crime caper Bad Eggs, a criminally unwatched comedic masterpiece; weekly contributor to his deliberately unassuming yet regularly brilliant blog The Scrivener’s Fancy (we’ve sung its praises before); and now author of a book that had me embarrassingly cackling to myself on various forms of public transport.

Just as he would have wanted.

The details: A Nest of Occasionals, along with Martin’s first book Lolly Scramble, is available now at all good bookshops — and presumably the dodgy ones, too. And do follow Tony’s lead and ferret through a DVD store for Bad Eggs, if for no other reason than to listen to the commentary track. Your sides will split.