Before brands learned how to fake relatability and the internet became a landfill of beige self-help sludge, Lord Birthday was doing a very particular kind of millennial-era online comedy.

The illustrations, all deadpan, badly-adjusted, strangely tender, should be instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever dissociated at a party or overthought a text for three hours. How to Appear Normal at Social Events gathers those now-iconic comics into a small hardback that feels a bit like opening a time capsule from the better, weirder end of early social media.

The humour here is dry, anxious, and beautifully stupid in exactly the right way. Pools become existential crises, social etiquette becomes impossible choreography, and basic functioning is treated as a sort of cursed instructional manual. Still very funny, still painfully accurate, and still perfect for anyone with an affection for old internet sensibility before everything got flattened into content.