Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time author says David Cameron’s praise makes him ‘queasy'

Cameron is so fond of the play he got the name and the theatre where it is showing wrong

It turns out the author of the iconic book which the play is based on is rather less enthralled by Cameron’s enthusiasm for his literary pursuits (Getty Images)

In a brazen attempt to turn the attention away from tax evasion and lighten the mood, David Cameron turned discussion to theatre at yesterday’s PMQ’s.

The Prime Minister declared his fondness for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and urged the public to watch the play to increase their understanding of autism.

But it turns out the author of the iconic book, which the play is based on, is rather less enthralled by Cameron’s enthusiasm for his literary pursuits. So much so that Cameron's praise is making him “queasy”.

“Have I missed something? I feel a little queasy already,” wrote Mark Haddon on Twitter.

All the same, it might be a relief for Haddon to hear Cameron is such an aficionado that he got the title of the story wrong.

“Let me put in a plug for The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Which I think is still available, I think it’s the Whitehall Theatre. I took my children the other day. It’s actually excellent and will give you a better explanation of autism than perhaps anything we can discuss in this house”.

To add insult to injury, the play is showing at the Gielgud Theatre and Whitehall Theatre changed its name in 2004 and has been known as Trafalgar Studios for over a decade now.

As you'd imagine, Cameron's adoration of the play prompted some discussion on Twitter.

The multi-award-winning mystery novel is narrated in first-person by 15-year-old boy Christopher John Francis Boone who describes himself as a “mathematician with some behaviour difficulties”. Although there is no explicit mention of autism in the book itself, it is mentioned in the blurb.