A FORMER Andover primary school teacher has launched his own collection of laugh out loud limericks- but he warns this title is not for children.

James Paterson has become a first-time author of 100 British Limericks which was released on Monday 6, November.

The teacher, who now lives in Salisbury, based his witty rhymes on everything and anything, but includes a lot of references to his home county Hampshire.

Mr Paterson said: “I was listening to a friend telling me some limericks and thought it really made me laugh, so I wondered can I come up with some for Salisbury or out of a friend’s name?

“So I just started to make them up and jotted them down and telling friends and family to see if they would find it funny - but never with a view to write a book.

“I have tried different ways of writing limericks, what I found best is not even to think about it. When you are in Tesco or on a train going to London, a lot of my limericks were from when I was on holiday in Japan this summer sat on a bullet train.”

In the space of a year, the 34-year-old crafted around 300 poems, ranging from verses on Stonehenge, the Salisbury plain to Cheddar Gorge, teaching and school conker competitions.

The creative writing enthusiast is now in abundance of invitations to literary festivals and will be attending the Worthing Book Fair in March 2018.

Mr Paterson added: “I think without shameless self-promotion, one of the things you do find with limerick collections is that they are collections of pre-existing limericks, but what makes mine slightly different is they are 100 of my own limericks.

“There is zero chance any of them have been heard before - unless you read my book.”

The fresh author is now set to work on his second book which he revealed “has nothing to do with limericks or poetry.”

But despite the contrast, Mr Paterson assured “I’m definitely not done with limericks - you’ll have to watch this space.”

To order 100 British Limericks go online to Amazon, Waterstones and The Telegraph Bookshop.