The 'raucous' debut novel set entirely on one epic night out

Indeed, in the book, the "tough personal life stuff" his three characters are dealing with does ignite as the evening goes on.

And as the friends travel up and down the road, and in and out of its bars and restaurants, they also move through a minefield of pressures and politics - of race, class, sex, age, economy - and attempt to navigate the precarious, prickly state of the modern world.

Their anxieties don't weigh the book down, though - the characters' coping strategy is to process them with a heavy dose of flippant humour, or switch focus to the night's more immediate desires and dramas.

That "rollercoaster" between fun and stress "feels very like life", Salam says.

"I'm really resistant to the idea of writing a trauma novel. I want something that is fun and entertaining."

Salam's vivid and inventive style makes it a highly enjoyable ride.

The author wanted to avoid stereotypes about young men - especially young Muslim men - and saw no reason to compromise his style or his grand ambitions to write about and for them, he says.

"The writing hasn't been dumbed down. It isn't talking down to anyone.

"I've just written something that I believe is trying to be as good as it can be, and I'm trying to canonise or write about a very British experience, a very masculine British experience.

"I think that experience should be given the same weight as the experience Irvine Welsh writes about in Trainspotting, or James Joyce's work, or Dickens, or that kind of thing. I don't see the point of not aiming for something that is on that level."

Salam's writing is both colloquial and kaleidoscopic, and the combination of high literary aspirations and streetwise storytelling can be traced back to his upbringing.

He grew up in Blackburn surrounded by "a lot of gang culture" and a soundtrack of Tupac Shakur, he says, while also frequenting the town's library with his parents and being made to write essays about classic literature by his granddad.

Later, he started reading Joyce's Ulysses on the same day that he went to watch a Pakistani rapper, and was inspired to try to fuse the two by giving the informal wordplay of his diverse youth culture "the same kind of respect or care as the best literature".

"I was interested in finding, what's the actual language of my and these boys' inner monologues, that's going to be very slang-heavy and will also have peppered in there Pakistani Urdu and some Arabic words?

"And also they can discuss Aristotle. They're not idiots. It's not this surface-level stereotypical version."

This is Salam's first published book, but he wrote two novels as a teenager, which he circulated to friends.

He would also make DIY films. "I was constantly just making stuff as a kid. I had Doctor Who action figures, and I would make my own film ideas with him."

His ideas grew more ambitious, but he didn't have the equipment, money or manpower to film them - so taught himself animation using YouTube tutorials.

"That was an affordable way I could make crazy things like an alien and a spaceship. I wasn't thinking about a career - animation was just something I wanted to do for fun."

However, after he made a music video for a friend, then won a competition, he found himself in demand to make animated lyric videos for the likes of James Blunt and Sir Elton John.

He juggled that with studying English, doing a screenwriting master's, then working as an intern storyliner on Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks.

"I was doing that and then I was doing the animation in the evening, because I wasn't going to turn down Elton John."

After the internship, he became a script editor on pre-school animation JoJo & Gran Gran - while also working on his own writing projects for both the page and screen.

He co-wrote a short film called Magid/Zafar, a tale of forbidden love set in a busy Pakistani takeaway (inspired by one on the Curry Mile, of course).

That won best British short at the British Independent Film Awards last November and was nominated for the same prize at the Baftas.

"I like flowing between mediums," Salam says casually.

Back outside on the Curry Mile, he points out some food outlets that feature in his novel.

"There's a bunch of sweet centres on this side. I walked past yesterday and they'd built a palace out of the Asian sweets, which just looked incredible. I wish I'd seen that as I was writing the book so I could have put it in.

"Maybe I'll get to make a film of it, and I'll put it in."

Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam is published on 28 May.