This decision inspired their journeys and this entertaining book. The idea of rediscovering a city is a good excuse for a non-fiction work in an age when trees are being constantly wasted on much shakier premises. The fact that O’Loghlin, a former criminal lawyer, is a celebrity – albeit a relatively self-deprecating one – probably helped the book concept get up, of course.

Not living within cooee of the great metropolis and centre of the universe that is Sydney, I was unaware of O’Loghlin’s radio persona (he hosts the evening show on 702 ABC Sydney and ABC local radio in NSW and the ACT) and had only seen him, fleetingly, on the small screen as a comedian and as the host of ABC TV’s The New Inventors. I wasn’t a fan, though I have now reconsidered because O’Loghlin is a very funny writer who may well, as the publicity blurb suggests, follow in the tradition of Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle and make a name for himself as an author, should he ever come up with another idea for a book. His comedic credibility will attract readers. Without the confessional aspects and his talent for memoir, it wouldn’t be nearly as substantial a book. Like any good comedian O’Loghlin has taken risks with the material, mining his own neuroses and encounters with the black dog of depression as he travels around Australia’s largest city.

The central theme of discovery (and, ultimately, self-discovery) can be applied anywhere, and the fact that Sydney is the foil here is merely incidental – a proposition that might irk the more parochial Sydneysider. Any of us can, as O’Loghlin does, find stimulation, inspiration, and challenges within our city, saving money in the process.

One of the things about travel is that you always take yourself along, something that hampers the author at times. In Lakemba and Auburn, for example, in Sydney’s west, he has difficulty relating to the prevalent Muslim culture and suffers some middle-class, Anglo-Celtic angst over this. Later, he reveals that he feels more comfortable among the sea of Asian faces in drug-riddled Cabramatta and hypothesises that: ‘Over the years we had been more exposed to, and had become much more used to, seeing Asians than Arabs and therefore felt less threatened by them. And we were bigger than most of them.’

While coming to grips with the realities of multiculturalism and confronting his own prejudices, the author produces entertaining digressions that make the book a more satisfying experience than it would have been if it were a mere travelogue. The material about the travails of life in a suburbia driven renovation-mad by reality television is funny stuff, and O’Loghlin’s hilarious, if withering, portrayal of the average tradesman in his natural habitat is priceless.

Meanwhile, for those who don’t know much about Sydney, his urban excursions to Kings Cross, Manly beach, Bundeena and points in between are certainly informative. If a book can inspire you to do something new, it’s a sign of success. One Saturday recently, we decided to follow O’Loghlin’s closing advice: ‘what you might want to do is to have a think about whether, within an hour’s drive of where you live, there is somewhere you’ve never been before and you might enjoy a few hours looking around.’ We took a trip to Brisbane’s south side to a Buddhist temple. This was a fascinating experience and would have cost us nothing if we hadn’t stopped at Ikea on the way home. Still, James O’Loghlin would, I’m sure, approve.