HIS witty observations saw him named the person who most accurately represented Great Britain after he travelled the country some two decades ago.

Now Bill Bryson has turned his razor-sharp eye to Sussex, spinning a bus journey from Bognor to Brighton into a mini treatise on celebrity, youth culture and McDonald’s.

He even has a pop at Brighton-born former glamour model Katie Price.

The US-born author of the bestselling book Notes from a Small Island writes about the journey for his new title, The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island.

Along the way he gets irked by a horologist’s “majestic indifference”, irritated by an offer of fries, “hooked” on celebrity magazines and disappointed by the Coastliner 700.

Describing his hopes for the bus, with a name that makes it sound “sleek and turbo-charged”, he writes: “I imagined myself sitting high above the ground in air-conditioned comfort in a plush velveteen seat, enjoying views over bright sea and rolling countryside through softly tinted glass, the kind so subtly coloured that you feel like turning to the person beside you and saying, 'Is this glass lightly tinted or is Littlehampton ever so slightly blue?'"

Instead, he found himself aboard “the sort of vehicle you would expect to be put on if you were being transferred from prisons”.

While travelling through an “endless clutter of suburbia,” his eyes fall on “one of those magazines with a strangely emphatic title – Hello!, OK!, Now!, What Now! Not Now!”

In an extract from the book published by a national newspaper, he adds: “I was hooked. I found myself absorbed in the sumptuously mismanaged lives of celebrities whose common denominators appeared to be tiny brains, giant boobs and a knack for entering into regrettable relationships.”

Among said celebrities was Brighton-born Katie Price, the TV personality and former glamour model previously known as Jordan, who featured in a magazine he was reading giving advice to fellow model Josie.

“Having boobs and getting an abortion doesn’t make you famous!”, he remembers reading, adding his own commentary: “Though intellectually and emotionally I was inclined to agree with Katie on this point, it did seem from the article that Josie was living proof of the contrary.”

The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island will be published by Doubleday on October 8.