To overhear is human. If someone wants to shoot their mouth off in public about their private life, it’s not your fault if your ear gets in the way. Overhearing is an accidental, victimless pleasure; it arrives by happenstance, free of charge, opening a door to the messy, funny life of an anonymous nobody.

For more than ten years, illustrator Oslo Davis has eavesdropped on the conversations of hundreds of these nobodies as they publicly whine, rave, gush and rabbit on about their lives, then drawn them up into a weekly newspaper cartoon. Overheard: The Art of Eavesdropping collects the best, juiciest and downright weirdest of Oslo’s Overheards, all embarrassingly, and deliciously, true.

About the author: Oslo Davis is an illustrator, artist and cartoonist whose work appears in newspapers, magazines and various other media worldwide. His weekly cartoon Overheard has been published in The Age newspaper since 2007.