After some experimentation, it dawns on him that he can walk through walls. One night in his flat, with the lights out, Dutilleul finds himself in the wrong room and can't account for how he got there. Monsieur Dutilleul (Michel Serrault) is a typical Aymé hero: an obscure little clerk, a Parisian version of Cosmo Topper or a less imaginative version of Walter Mitty. It's not hard to see why: 'Le Passe-muraille' is a charming bit of froth, without the substance or plot line to sustain a full-length evening. This same story was adapted into the musical 'Amour', which flopped quickly on Broadway in 2002. Its title would roughly translate into English as 'The Passer-Through-Walls'. The TV production 'Le Passe-muraille', a one-off comedy, adapts Aymé's story of the same name, his best-known tale. Desperate to get rid of this inconvenience, he proceeds to commit every imaginable sin. (This is especially evident in his bitter story 'La Carte'.) My own favourite Aymé tale is 'La Grace', about an ordinary man - a decent individual, but hardly a candidate for sainthood - who suddenly finds himself equipped with an unwanted halo. Some of Aymé's best stories, intriguingly, were written during the Nazi occupation.

There are also distinct similarities between Aymé's works and the stories of James Thurber. Aymé wrote fantasy stories which, like Smith's, tended to feature unobtrusive men whose lives are irrevocably changed by an unexpected encounter with the supernatural, not always ending happily but usually with a bit of sex along the way. Marcel Aymé (pronounced 'Ah-may') was France's equivalent to Thorne Smith.

Le passe-muraille by Marcel Aymé