One of life’s lessons we must all grudgingly learn is that all the best authors are dead. Dickens? Bitten the dust. Shakespeare? Worm food. You will not find Albert Camus visiting Epsom Playhouse to discuss the finer points of L’Etranger.

So it is worth embracing those who fulfill the criteria of being both brilliant and alive. And if you are one of the millions of owners of the Artemis Fowl book series then take heed, because its author Eoin Colfer is comign to town with his award-winning live show - Fairies, Fiends and Flatulence.

The tour precedes the sixth installment of the fantasy series, Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, with his performance at Epsom Playhouse scheduled for the not-particularly enigmatic Monday, August 11 at 3pm. The show combines storytelling and stand-up comedy to give audiences a hilarious insight into the inspiration for the teenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl. It also earned Eoin a Herald Angel Award for Performance at the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe (the first author to win such an award), but it is not just aimed at the schoolchildren who have fallen for this fantasy world.

“The people I want to surprise are the parents,” says Eoin, “they take the kids along on a Sunday evening and you can see on faces they don't want to be there. They’re there with their little farting leprichauns, the soccer’s on the telly - but when I look up after 10 minutes hopefully that will have changed.

“It is absolute escapism. For an hour you can escape back to your childhood - it is a stress-buster and you come out of it feeling good.”

As a child, Eoin would read anything he could get his hands on, “swashbuckling classics like Robin Hood and Ivanhoe - anything with a crossbow or sword in it”. And his childhood memories form a significant part of the show, because it was his upbringing at Chez Colfer in Wexford that sparked his imagination into creating the Artemis Fowl world.

He says: “I have fond reminiscences of growing up in Ireland in the 70s. My family have been a huge influence on my work and anyone who has grown up with four brothers will have got into a lot of mischief and a lot of dodgy escapades. Luckily I’ve been writing for a long time so a lot of it written down.

“My two boys quite funny as well, I get lines from them. I disguised them in previous books but now they're in there wholesale.”

The Time Paradox sees Artemis as a 14-year-old who is more interested in his fellow man than the “evil, criminal mastermind” of previous books. Eoin’s decision to “try and put these two different people together” results in Artemis travelling back in time to when he was 12 and an “unreconstructed, nasty, horrible boy so he can see himself as others see him”.

Of course, there won’t be any of those in the audience, will there?

Eoin Colfer presents Fairies, Fiends and Flatulence; Epsom Playhouse, Ashley Avenue, Epsom, KT18 5TL; Monday, August 11, 3pm, £10, call 01372 742555, visit epsomplayhouse.co.uk for tickets.