Two friends have collaborated to release a comic poetry book which looks to raise money for four island charities.

‘Comic Cuttings and Quirky Quatrains’ has been written and put together by Valerie Cottle and Howard Caine, with the backing of three commercial sponsors – the Fundamentum Property Group, Cowley Groves estate agents and Ramsey Crookall stockbrokers.

The book will feature a number of quirky and unique anecdotes, such as ‘potholes and a pot-bellied pig’, ‘Alan Titchmarsh’s trousers’, the ‘failures of air traffic control’, a ‘rather naughty clergyman’ and an ‘emotional support alligator’.

All proceeds from the sales of the books will go towards four island charities - Beach Buddies, Crossroads, Housing Matters, and the Manx Wildlife Trust.

Each of these charities will receive 120 copies of the book to sell for £10 a copy, and it will not be sold in commercial bookshops.

Authors Valerie, a former journalist, and Howard have been friends since 1989, when Howard played the part of midshipman Peter Heywood in Valerie’s Manx Radio dramatisation of the 1962 film ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’.

Although Howard has regularly written comic poetry and publicly performed his pieces, Valerie admits that this is a new venture for her.

She said: ‘I would say I’m better known for more serious publications and this is new to me. I only started writing comic poetry about 18 months ago when my late partner was very ill and I needed to cheer myself up.

‘I’ve made a speciality of collecting unlikely, but real, newspaper headlines and enlarging on them in verse. Subjects for these poems include “lamb found in car with drugs worth £10,000”, “I played the Queen in a flea powder advert” and “abandoning chickens around the island is unacceptable”.’

Talking about how the idea came together for the book, Valerie said: ‘Howard and I are old friends, but we got talking last winter after I’d seen him performing one of his poems at an event. I decided that we could produce a book as a joint effort.

‘Doing it for charity just made sense, since neither of us wanted to make any money out of it – we will simply hand the books over to our four charities, and they will do all the selling for themselves.

‘I had done another book, ‘Douglas in Passing’, with the artist Ian Coulson a few years ago, from which all the profits went to the IOM Woodland Trust.’

The cover design for the book was done by Ruth Sutherland, with the illustrations being drawn by Peter Hearsey.

According to Valerie, the book didn’t take ‘too long’ to complete. She added: ‘With a few brief exceptions, all the poems were already written before I started putting the book together, so it didn’t take long at all.

‘All four charities have been very enthusiastic about the idea, so obviously we hope that the Manx public will now give them as much support as possible.

‘With an allocation of 120 copies, each charity will have the potential to raise £1,200.’