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Call the Midlife is a book about reaching 50, as Chris is about to. This should be the most exciting, least depressing time of one’s life, yet we are brainwashed into fearing and loathing it, worrying about being suffocated by the so-called ‘midlife crisis’. But potentially it is the Golden Age in the whole of life, when we can still physically do much of whatever takes our fancy, and some things better than ever. Mentally, we are streets ahead of where we’ve ever been before, as we are in terms of influence too – having the sway, knowing more people and more about these people than at any time in the past. Even the odd tinge of wisdom begins to creep in. But of course there is an issue. Even though we are fully aware of all this, few of us have the first clue about how to go about the half-time team-talk from ourselves to ourselves.

Call the Midlife is Chris’s account of taking a year out, mentally and physically, before reaching the age of fifty, via some highly entertaining journeys of self-discovery that included his clandestine preparations for the London Marathon. His wise and witty narrative enables him to ask all the questions he needs answered to position himself for a successful assault on the future. Health and wealth, love and marriage, our hopes and dreams, sex and death. We have fewer summers and Christmases left than those we’ve already seen, yet they can be fuller and happier and more calorific than ever before. Chris knocks on the door of those who know best about the rest and relaxation and sleep we need to fire on all cylinders with plenty of the right fuel in the tank for at least the next 25 years. After all, we are more bullet-proof than any generation that’s come before us.

Call the Midlife also includes Chris’s vibrant account of the two massive curve-balls thrown at him in 2015 – the offer to present Top Gear, the BBC’s biggest international programme, and the decision to relaunch the classic chat-show TFI Friday for a new series.