What would you do if your son suddenly turned into a Tory? This is the crisis which confronts middle-aged Hastings couple, Eddie and Emma, in this, John O’Farrell’s first new novel since 2015. For Eddie and Emma are both ardent, lifelong card-carrying Labour Party members. Eddie even harbours ambitions of office: he is already on the local candidate’s list and has high hopes of running for parliament. The news that their son, Dylan, has returned from university, a sudden and enthusiastic convert to the party which brought us austerity, Brexit and the disastrous but mercifully brief premiership of Liz Truss, thus comes as something of a shock to them. O’Farrell made his name writing the hilarious comic memoir, Things Can Only Get Better and I suspect Tory supporters (currently something of a minority breed) may enjoy this book rather less than the rest of us. But the novel is fairly even-handed and O’Farrell is happy to poke fun at Eddie and Emma’s Labour-supporting ways too. Otherwise, with the General Election looming, this is a funny, good-natured book, full of solid jokes and with an underlying message emphasising the importance of recognising the importance of tolerance and learning to live with people who have political views different to our own.
Arthur Dent is having a very bad day for three reasons. First, he has learned that his house is to be demolished to make way for a bypass. Second, he has learned that his best friend, who goes by the name ‘Ford Prefect’ is not, in fact, from Guildford but is an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of star of Betelgeuse. Thirdly, and most worryingly, he learns that the Earth itself is also out to be demolished by a small-minded poetry-loving alien race called the Vogons. In fact, Ford’s alien status proves very useful as he is able to help Arthur escape the Earth before it explodes. The duo thus begin a series of adventures which see them encounter such wonders as the Infinite Improbability Drive, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the two-headed galactic president, Zaphod Beeblebrox and the electronic book, Ford is a researcher for. This book has the same name as the overall story: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Douglas Adams’ tale was actually a radio series before it was a book, but while the radio show was a perfect vehicle for Adams’ clever ideas, the story (though rather meandering) does work very well in book form. Sentences like ‘The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t,’ “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so” and “Reality is frequently inaccurate,” really do benefit from being written down and appreciated. Adams wrote five books in the series between 1979 and 2002 while Eoin Colfer has since written a sixth one. You’ll either be very familiar with concepts such as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the computer Deep Thought and the resonance of the number ‘42’ or you won’t be. If you are not, why not give it a try? Life, the universe and, indeed, everything will seem better once you do.
With the first two novels already a huge success, the Hitchhiker’s Guide… arrived on TV as a six-part BBC series in 1981. The TV version is not without flaws: the story was then incomplete and so rather fizzles out in the final episode. The special effects now look dated while some, such as Zaphod’s second head never looked good in the first place. I will always love the series though, partly because it is the format in which I first encountered the story. And, also, I would argue because much of it genuinely is great. Even the theme music is brilliant. The casting is excellent, and the late Peter Jones did a brilliant job of narrating and providing the voice of the Book. The explanation concerning the existence of the Babel Fish is particularly marvellously realised with sublime visual effects accompanying the hilarious narrative.
Douglas Adams was a genius: years ahead of his time. Sadly, he died in 2001 before the film project he had worked towards for so long could be realised. It seems likely more input from him might have helped as the resulting 2005 film directed by Garth Jennings while not a complete disaster, certainly disappointed many. The cast was good although more star-studded than in 1981: Stephen Fry (in fact, one of Adams’ old friends) voiced the Book and Martin Freeman played the dressing gowned hero, Arthur Dent. But the whole thing felt a bit rushed: the ingenious concept of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was dispensed with in one throwaway line. And the issue of Zaphod’s extra head – actually only mentioned once in the radio series and a joke which has been taken a bit too seriously by adaptors – was again mishandled.
More recently, it has been revealed a new TV version of Adams’ saga is planned. This might well prove to be a better medium for Adams’ creation than cinema was.
Imagine the worst hangover you’ve ever had. Now multiply it by ten. That’s the situation that confronts Molly at the start of Katy Brent’s winning new comedy thriller. Not only is Molly suffering from the usual consequences which typically follow a night of alcoholic excess, but she soon discovers her apparent involvement in a very public sex act has left her plastered all over the harsh and unforgiving world of social media. Bad as this is, worse is to come: Molly’s flatmate is dead. What happened to her? Why aren’t the police more interested in uncovering the truth? Who is ultimately responsible for her death? Katy Brent’s new novel is every bit as funny, clever and spellbinding as her first book, the brilliant How To Kill Men and Get Away With It.
Adrian Edmondson was born in January 1957 and is thus now nearly 67 years old. He has spent around fifteen weeks of his life playing Vyvyan from The Young Ones, much less than 0.5% of his life so far. He enjoyed The Young Ones and remains proud of it, but has not really watched it for forty years. He was embarrassed when, working with Richard Briers around a decade later, the older actor on their first meeting repeated to him, Vyvyan’s famous tirade about the “SO BLOODY NICE” Good Life starring “FELICITY “TREACLE” KENDALL AND RICHARD “SUGAR-FLAVOURED SNOT” BRIERS” from The Young Ones virtually verbatim. They got on alright after that.
He thus discusses his most famous role slightly reluctantly. The book’s chapter on The Young Ones reads simply: “Surely enough’s been said about this over the years.” However, this is immediately followed by a second chapter (in fact, the longest in the book) discussing his memories of the sitcom in detail.
But there are many other things to enjoy in this well-written autobiography. For starters, there’s Ade’s dislike of his own name. The moniker, “Adrian Edmondson” has never exactly tripped easily off the tongue and is awkward to spell. Just as his friend and comedy partner Richard Mayall became “Rik,” Ade planned to change his name to the similar sounding but catchier “Eddie Monsoon” but he missed the paperwork deadline and Adrian (or “Ade”) he remains. “Edina Monsoon” was, of course, the name chosen for his wife Jennifer Saunders’s most famous creation in Absolutely Fabulous.
There is actually very little about Jennifer (in fact, Ade’s second wife who he married in 1985) or their three daughters here. This is fair enough. The couple have long agreed not to discuss each other much in public and besides, she has written her autobiography already (2013’s Bonkers: My Life in Laughs).
We do, however, learn about his childhood spent in Bradford and in many other international trouble-spots, his sometimes strained relationship with his often difficult father, his brief run-ins with corporal punishment at school and less formalised violence on the mean streets of Bradford, his early joyous days with Rik both at Manchester Uni and during his comedy career on The Young Ones, The Comic Strip and Bottom.
He also talks a little about his occasional mental health struggles and about the eventual souring of his relationship with Mayall in the decade before his death, his music career (of less interest to me) and the somewhat higgledy-piggledy nature of his work in the last two decades (Celebrity Masterchef, some music, some drama: Twelfth Night on stage, War and Peace on TV and some comedy: a supporting role in comedy drama, Back To Life).
He may not be a young one anymore, but this remains a good read about a fascinating life and career.
Doon Mackichan is one of Britain’s finest comedy actresses. You might have seen her playing Cathy, the neighbour from hell in the sitcom, Two Doors Down or as Jane Plough, the long-suffering agent of Matt Berry’s wayward actor in Toast of London. She’s also been in Roman-era sitcom, Plebs, I’m Alan Partridge and far too many other things to detail here.
There is more to the title of the book, than simply a suggestive innuendo. Throughout this very readable memoir, each chapter begins with a short character description of the sort an actor might see when considering taking a particular role. In this case, they each sum up a particular “part” which Doon has been forced to adopt at different stages of her life e.g. The Angry Young Feminist, The Stupid Tart, The Deranged Mother and so on.
Her life has had its share of ups and downs. Highs have included her three series on seminal Channel 4 sketch show, Smack The Pony (1999-2003) with Sally Phillips and Fiona Allen, which was one of the most satisfactory experiences of her working life. She also swam the English Channel. Lows have included illness, divorce and one particularly intense family crisis.
A recurrent theme of the book has been the persistent sexism she has encountered throughout her life and career. Boys have treated her badly from the playground onwards. In this, she is certainly sadly anything but unique, although she is refreshingly frank in speaking up about it. The sexism has extended from the inadequate childcare provisions laid on during times when she has had young children to severe restrictions being placed on the types of role she has been allowed to play. Her own Mary Whitehouse Experience was an unpleasant one with the four stars, particularly David Baddiel treating her with arrogance and disdain. A pre-fame Ricky Gervais also comes out of the book badly, making a pushy attempt to land himself a starring role in the all-female Smack The Pony while a famous, dress-wearing male British artist (hmmm…who could that be?) is amongst those who have made inappropriate comments to her. As one of the most prominent women appearing on the brilliant Brass Eye ‘Paedegeddon’ Special, she was demonised by the tabloid press in 2001
Overall, this is an engaging book from a talented actress who one feels could have been bigger than she has been. Doon Mackichan seems angry occasionally. She is right to be so and is certainly angry about the right things.
My Lady Parts, by Doon Mackichan. Published by: Canongate.
Starring: Julian Barratt, Essie Davis, Russell Tovey, Simon Farnaby, Andrea Riseborough, Steve Coogan
Directed By: Sean Foley
Running Time: 89 minutes
UK Release Date: Out Now
BBFC Certificate: 15
Your Rating: 4 out of 5
Review: Do you remember Mindhorn?
The popular Eighties and Nineties action TV series featured Richard Thorncroft as Isle of Man detective Bruce P. Mindhorn, a man whose left eye had been replaced by a lie detector, enabling him to literally “see the truth”.
Of course, you don’t. The show never existed. The whole crazy Bergerac/Six Million Dollar Man concept comes courtesy of Julian Barratt who here plays actor Thorncroft and co-writer Simon Farnaby (Horrible History/Bunny and the Bull) who doubles up here as Thorncroft’s onetime stuntman, Clive. Now, twenty-five years after his heyday, Thorncroft is an ageing balding egomaniac who has been reduced to producing adverts for girdles. That’s until the police get in touch. A murderer known only as “the Kestrel” is on the loose on the Isle of Man and is so deranged that he thinks his Eighties childhood hero is a real person. He refuses to talk to anyone else. Time, then, for Mindhorn to get back in action.
It’s a great idea and despite a few patchy elements, is brilliantly funny. Much of the fun, of course, comes from seeing clips of the convincingly awful looking Mindhorn TV series as well as the contrast between Thorncroft’s cheesy but glamorous younger life and his somewhat pathetic existence today. It’s a great role for the underrated Barratt, too young to have been a grownup Eighties TV star in reality and best known for being Noel Fielding’s other half in The Mighty Boosh. Steve Coogan is also great in the role of Peter Eastman, a minor actor in Mindhorn who has since enjoyed greater success than Thorncroft ever achieved in his long -running spin-off show, Windjammer.
Part Alan Partridge (has-been star), part Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (fictional Eighties TV show), part Toast of London (egomaniac actor), Mindhorn is a hoot.
And don’t be surprised if you come out humming the words to Thorncroft’s pop hit “Can’t Handcuff The Wind” either. It’s surprisingly catchy.
Overall Verdict: Mindhorn: even the name is funny.
The ten highest grossing films at the UK box office in 1991 were as listed below.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Silence of the Lambs
Three Men and a Little Lady
Dances With Wolves
Sleeping With The Enemy
The Naked Gun 21/2: The Smell of Fear
Home Alone
Kindergarten Cop
The Commitments
I only saw Robin Hood and T2 at the cinema at the time. I have seen all the other films since. What does the US top 10 look like?
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Beauty and the Beast
Silence of the Lambs
City Slickers
Hook
The Addams Family
Sleeping With The Enemy
Father of the Bride
The Naked Gun 21/2: The Smell of Fear
In addition to Robin Hood and T2, I saw Hook at the cinema. I didn’t enjoy it though! Spielberg is a genius, but I would today rank Hook alongside Jurassic Park: The Lost World as being amongst the great filmmaker’s very worst films. Even as a teenager, I disliked overly sentimental films. In fact, I think that bothered me more then that it does today.
The American and British lists are pretty different. Some of the variations can be explained simply by the fact many of the films were released later in the UK. Hook, Beauty and the Beast and The Addams Family were not released in the UK until 1992 and all performed well when they were released then. Similarly, Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop didn’t make the 1991 top ten in the US, but had already been big hits there in 1990.
But some of the differences do seem to be cultural. There does seem to be some evidence, British audiences prefer films set in their own country. This probably explains why Robin Hood edged out the all-American Terminator 2 to claim the top position at the UK box office. Kevin Costner’s film does demonstrate a famously terrible knowledge of British geography: at one point, our medieval heroes land at Dover and then travel to Nottingham, passing Hadrian’s Wall – a distinctive and ancient landmark situated around 200 miles to the north of Nottingham. But it is at least set in Blighty and features a number of British stars amongst the cast, notably the late, great Alan Rickman.
Personally, while I enjoyed both films at the time, I was much more excited by Terminator 2. Even today, it seems much better than the often quite ropey Robin Hood. Although still 14, I managed to get in to see the ’15’ rated film, the only time I’ve attempted this. My friend who was also 14, but crucially a few inches shorter than me was challenged about his age on going in. Despite this, we both managed to see the film that day. We had, of course, both already seen the original Terminator. It was rated ’18’ and was admittedly very violent. But it had been broadcast on TV where it could, of course, be viewed by anyone.
City Slickers? Father of the Bride? The first, at least, is a very enjoyable film, but neither seem to have appealed to Britons as much as to Americans. By far the most baffling variation is the bizarrely strong showing for the generally abysmal Three Men and a Baby sequel, Three Men and a Little Lady in the UK. I’ve watched it. It’s awful. However, much of the film is set in the UK. At a time when the actual British film industry was in the doldrums amidst an economic recession and twelve years of underfunding from an unsympathetic Tory government, this factor in itself was enough to make this rubbish a hit in the UK in 1991.
Although as I myself went to see King Ralph at the cinema in 1991, I’m not exactly in a strong position to feel too superior about this.
KING RALPH, John Goodman, 1991, (c)Universal Pictures
Two great Scottish authors died on 9th June 2013. One, Iain Banks attracted a deluge of controversy with his debut, The Wasp Factory in 1984, following it up with fourteen other novels amongst them The Bridge, The Crow Road, Complicity and The Quarry.
The other, Iain M. Banks produced a similar number of volumes of science fiction. These included his series of novels about the Culture who have been described as “a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens, and advanced super-intelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way.”
Edgar Wright’s 2006 film, Hot Fuzz (2006) includes a scene in which two policemen, played by the comedian, Bill Bailey, who are subsequently revealed to be identical twins read books by the two authors.
Of course, both writers – Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks, were the same man.
Saving Mr Banks
Banks died, much too young, ten years ago. By a tragic coincidence, he was close to finishing the novel which would turn out to be his last, The Quarry, a book which features a character dying of cancer, when he learned he had terminal gallbladder cancer himself. He finished the book and quickly married his long term partner, Adele Hartley at the end of March after asking her, if “you would do me the honour of becoming my widow.” Publication dates for The Quarry were pushed forward to the middle of June. This was still too late for Banks who died on June 9th 2013, at the fifty-nine.
In The Quarry, Banks describes cancer like this: “Cancer makes bits of you grow that are supposed to have stopped growing after a certain point, crowding out the bits you need to keep on living, if you’re unlucky, if the treatments don’t work.”
He would not actually be very old even if he was still alive: his 70th birthday would have been next February. Selfishly, I cannot help but mourn the seven or eight books which he would probably written over the course of the last decade had he lived, books which will now remain forever unwritten and forever unread.
Culture wars
He would doubtless have had much to say about the events of the last ten years too. He would have been disappointed to see that the Conservatives are still in power after thirteen years of a dismal lack of achievement. “I’m not arguing there are no decent people in the Tory party,” he once wrote, “but they’re like sweetcorn in a turd; technically they kept their integrity but they’re still embedded in shit.” He would have been horrified and angered by Brexit and by the rise of Johnson and Trump. “Look me in the eye, you twat, and tell me you weren’t tempted to vote for him (Boris Johnson),” argues one character. in his final book “You’re more of a Blairite than that lying, war-mongering scumbag is himself.”
I don’t know for sure what Iain Banks would have written about any of the events of the last turbulent decade. However, I am quite certain it would be funnier and more insightful and wittier than anything I could come up with myself. As both an author and a social commentator, his presence has been sorely missed.
Memory Banks
A selection of quotations from his works…
“Looking at me, you’d never guess I’d killed three people. It isn’t fair…I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.” The Wasp Factory (1984).
“This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called “Gurgeh.” The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game.” The Player of Games (1987).
“There’s this sloth in the jungle walking from one tree to another, and it’s mugged by a gang of snails, and when the police ask the sloth if it could identify any of its attackers, it says, ‘I don’t know; it all happened so quickly…” Espedair Street (1987).
“We are what we do, not what we think.” The Player of Games (1987).
“The way to a man’s heart is through his chest!” Use of Weapons (1990).
“Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.” The State of the Art (1991).
“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” The Crow Road (1992). Opening line.
“When in Rome; burn it.” The State of the Art (1991).
“People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots… in fact I think they have to be… a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.” The Crow Road (1992).
“Collective responsibility. Also known as sharing the blame.” Excession (1996).
“Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite.” Dead Air (2001).
“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.” Transition (2009).
“He knew all the answers. Everybody did. Everybody knew everything and everybody knew all the answers. It was just that the enemy seemed to know better ones.” Surface Detail (2010).
“One should never regret one’s excesses, only one’s failures of nerve.” The Hydrogen Sonata (2012).
“After doing extensive research, I can definitely tell you that single malt whiskies are good to drink.” Raw Spirit (2003).
“Well, we’re all young once, Prentice, and those that are lucky get to be old.” The Crow Road (1992).
According to Wikipedia, the top 10 films released in 1988 by worldwide gross were as follows:
Rain Man
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Coming to America
Crocodile Dundee II
Twins
Rambo III
A Fish Called Wanda
Cocktail
Big
Die Hard
I saw two of these films at the cinema as an eleven-year-old. As of 2023, I have seen eight of them.
I wasn’t a big film buff as a child. Although never sporty or outdoorsy, I had lots of other things to do. I played. I rode my BMX around the park. I learned to swim. I drew cartoons and wrote stories. I read books: I first read Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books. I also still enjoyed comics like Buster and Oink! I played computer games: we got an Amiga around this time. I was not yet really into music (although did watch ITV’s The Chart Show) and was as yet untroubled by girls.
But films? Occasionally, I’d watch Police Academy films during sleepovers but that was about it.
In December, I went to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit to celebrate my twelfth birthday. This was quite a big deal, not only because of the film itself, but because it was our family’s first outing to Peterborough’s brand new Showcase multiplex cinema. A few well-behaved friends came along too.
In those days, the very idea of seeing live action characters and cartoons interacting on screen was still so novel that even seeing clips from Pete’s Dragon or even much older films like Anchors Aweigh (in which Jerry the mouse dances with Gene Kelly) or the politically incorrect, A Song of the South was still quite exciting. The prospect of an entire film where this occurred throughout was thus very thrilling indeed.
I thus enjoyed it. I even got a big poster of the film as an additional present too. But this was 35 years ago now and, I confess, I’ve not seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit again since, so have no real idea how it holds up today. I do know that my parents, who were then about the same age then, as I am now, did not enjoy the experience. Never big fans of cartoons in any form they fond both the film and the new cinema noisy and unpleasant.
As far as I can remember I saw only two other films at the cinema during 1988: the fantasy film, Willow, which was good but a flop and Crocodile Dundee II which was rubbish but a success.
I’ve never seen Rambo III and doubt I ever will now, although I enjoyed the first Rambo when I saw it years later. Twins has been on TV lots of times. I’ve seen bits of it but have never felt moved to watch it in full.
More than half of the films in the top ten would actually have been unsuitable for me to watch as an eleven-year-old. Two feature Tom Cruise. Rain Man features one of his best ever performances. Cocktail is one of his worst. I didn’t see Coming To America until a few years. It wasn’t worth the wait.
I did enjoy Big, however, which I saw fairly soon after it came out on video. I suppose I was a similar age to the boy in the film, although unlike him I was always tall for my age. It was a good film which I watched with my family. We already knew Tom Hanks from Splash! It’s an enjoyable film although a slight note of unease creeps in when the main character, still psychologically a child, has sex with an adult woman.
As I was already a Monty Python fan, I also saw A Fish Called Wanda on video as soon as I could. For me, the real revelations in the film were Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis, not Michael Palin or John Cleese. Although, to be fair, I was already very familiar with them.
All the films on the list pale in comparison to Die Hard, however. I finally saw it when I was fourteen or fifteen. I felt very grown up watching it at home one Saturday night with my older brother and his soon-to-be-wife. It’s a brilliant idea, beautifully executed. Bruce Wills isn’t always great in everything but was perfect for this. And has there ever been a better screen villain than Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber? I don’t think so.
This will apparently be the penultimate series of anthologies written by and (usually) starring the onetime League of Gentlemen, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. This is a shame as while it no longer regularly scales the brilliant heights of the likes of The 12 Days of Christine and The Riddle of the Sphinx in the early series, these clever one-off dramas, sometimes funny, usually dark and all linked by the number nine, are always watchable. Indeed, as in the case of the last two programmes featured here, they are sometimes still very good indeed.
The Bones of St Nicholas: Things begin strongly with this church-based Christmas special. Mystery abounds surrounding a certain Dr. Parkway’s (Pemberton) motivation for spending his Christmas Eve camping out in a supposedly haunted church. This suffers by comparison with the superb The Devil of Christmas Inside No 9 festive outing from 2016, but is nevertheless enjoyable. This seasonal outing of course, first aired in December 2022. The rest of the series was shown on BBC Two in April and May 2023.
Mother’s Ruin: Supernatural rituals, criminal violence and an apparent full-blown demonic possession all have a part to play in this darkly comic episode. Steve and Reece play two somewhat inept brothers whose attempts to reveal the secrets of their late mother’s legacy are thrown into disarray by the unexpected arrival of underworld figures, Reggie and Francis (played by Phil Daniels and Anita Dobson) and one parrot.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Just to be clear, the title refers to “fear of Friday 13th.” Gavin (Shearsmith) has it bad (he has his reasons) and decides to play it safe by phoning in sick and spending the day at home. But barely has his wife (Amanda Abbington) left the house than a bizarre combination of circumstances conspire to see the ultra-superstitious Gavin overwhelmed by a deluge of ladders, black cats, peacock feathers and other traditional bad luck symbols.
Love is a Stranger: The horrors of online dating are all too real for Vicky (the always excellent Claire Rushbrook). And worse: there’s a murderer on the loose. Amazingly, in 49 episodes, there has never actually been a bad Inside No 9 yet. Sadly, Love is a Stranger comes closer to securing this distinction than most. You’ll see the twist coming a mile off.
Three by Three: In an ingenious ruse, Steve and Reece went to the trouble of manufacturing publicity for an entirely bogus episode called Hold On Tight! Photos showed the duo dressed as two On The Buses style drivers and standing alongside ageing 1970s comedy icon, Robin Askwith. It was then claimed that the episode (which, of course, never existed) had been pulled at the last minute in favour of what appeared to be a mainstream quiz show entitled Three by Three, featuring three trios of competing contestants and hosted by the popular quick-witted comedian, Lee Mack. Of course, despite creating a plausible quiz show format, mostly realistic performances from actors playing the contestants, convincing humorous banter from Mack (currently host of ITV real-life TV quiz, The 1% Club) and uniquely the complete absence of Steve and Reece from the cast, this was actually still another instalment of Inside No 9 in disguise. Many viewers were apparently fooled, some even turning over or assuming something had gone wrong with their iPlayer. Those that remained were treated to something which for most of its running time really does appear to be a real life game show. But over time, a sense of unease grows as it becomes clear there is something very “off” about one set of contestants, the Oakwoods. What exactly is going on?
The Last Weekend: Joe and Chas (Steve and Reece) have been in a relationship foe nine years. With Joe seriously ill, the two snatch a quick holiday together. But will it be their last? An emotionally devastating episode and the best in this series. The dramatic shift in tone between the cheerful dance sequence which occurs half way through the programme and how things eventually turn out in the end is almost overwhelming.
A fairly good series then, although personally I can’t help but feel disappointed that we’ll never see the Hold on Tight! episode.
Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Simon Callow, Phil Daniels, Anita Dobson, Amanda Abbington, Dermot O’Leary, Claire Rushbrook, Matthew Horne, Asim Chaudhry, Lee Mack.
Welcome to the world of Kitty Collins. Busy London socialite. Instagram influencer. Wholesale murderer.
She has her reasons, initially only slaying men, almost accidentally at first who she chances upon and who crucially behave very badly in the course of their everyday lives.
We all know the sort. The married man who sleazes over younger women on a drunken night out. The bastard who ghosts her friend after their all too brief relationship with the “clingy” female gets too “serious” for him. Or any number of the gropers, potential rapists or misogynists who walk our streets, drink in our pubs, dance in our nightclubs, vote in our parliaments, work in our offices and sit in our homes on a daily basis.
Less sinister than Dexter and with more fashion sense than Norman Bates, Kitty soon finds herself addicted to this sort of morally righteous brand of killing, finding it provides a real sense of purpose to her otherwise rather shallow social media orientated existence. But with a potential new boyfriend looming on the horizon and an anonymous stalker taunting her with threatening messages, can Kitty really go on killing men and getting away with it forever?
Author Katy Brent has created a marvellous anti-hero here in this wonderfully compelling first novel. Certain to be made into a TV series or film soon, this is a British American Psycho for the 2020s, but somehow a lot more accessible and certainly a hell of a lot more fun.
Published by: HQ Digital. Available on ebook now and in book form on 16 February 2023.
According to some accounts, the current release Jurassic World: Dominion might very well represent the final faltering step in the popular movie saga which began so strongly with the classic Jurassic Park back in 1993. In truth, ending the Jurassic series now might well prove to be the best decision, But, just in case, anyone does make the brave and perhaps foolhardy decision to resurrect this dormant movie franchise, here are some potential film titles which have not been used yet…
Troubled Tory Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has denied that his leadership had been fatally wounded by last night’s confidence vote. In fact, he appeared to deny that such a vote had even taken place. “If there was a large group of MPs gathering in the Commons on that particular date, I was certainly unaware of it,” he stated, in comments made this morning. He promised to launch an immediate inquiry to establish both whether such a vote occurred and whether he himself had been there or not.
Mr. Johnson went on to deny hearing crowds booing him on his arrival at both the Platinum Jubilee Service on Friday or at the special Platinum Jubilee Concert held on Saturday evening. “I am not aware of either of these events or this so-called “jubilee” which everyone in the media seems so obsessed with,” he argued. “Honestly, the suggestion that most people care whether or not we have a Queen or whether I once saw a birthday cake while walking past a shop window at a serious time like this is just plain balderdash.” He added: “The media seem to be convinced everyone is partying and celebrating all the time. It simply isn’t true. In the real world, most ordinary people are too busy struggling with the cost of living crisis and other problems which my government created.”
Elsewhere, Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries also attacked the media claiming recent footage of the Queen sharing tea with Paddington Bear had been faked using “special effects”.
“Isn’t it funny that a series called the Carry On films has stopped?” jokes the comedian, Tim Vine. They in fact stopped a very long time ago now – in 1978 – but the public fascination with them has never ceased. From the gentle but jolly black-and-white National Service comedy, Carry On Sergeant in 1958 to the abysmal Carry On Emmannuelle twenty years later, a total of thirty Carry Ons films were produced. The early films such as the most second and most commercially successful release, Carry On Nurse (1958) were written by Norman Hudis and tended to poke gentle fun at national institutions, for example, the Army, hospitals, police force and schools. A big change came when Talbot Rothwell took over as screenwriter for the the 007 spoof, Carry On Spying (1964), a development which coincided with the arrival of Barbara Windsor on the cast and the move into colour. Carry On Spying in which Windsor played Daphne Honeybutt was the last one to appear in black-and-white.
From that point onwards, the films became less innocent and more smutty. Characters started having names like Dr. Tinkle and Gladstone Screwer and the films were crammed with all the sexual innuendoes (“Ooh! What a lovely pair!” “Once a week is enough for any man|!”) which they’ve become notorious for. On the plus side, they also became notably more ambitious, parodying everything from historical epics (Carry On Cleo, the most highly regarded of the series or Carry On Up The Khyber) to the Hammer Horror series (Carry On Screaming) with mostly enjoyable results, while always remaining cheap to produce.
As the 1970s began, however, things took a turn for the worse as the changing social mores of the ever more permissive society pushed the films into the gutter. Carry On Henry (1971) was good fun and the contemporary Carry On Camping (1969) – famous for the scene in which Barbara Windsor’s top bursts off during an exercise session – was one of the most successful of the whole lot. But by the mid-70s, the quality had declined to such an extent that most of the regular cast (Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw) had abandoned the whole enterprise. Those familiar faces were, of course, a key reason why the films had done so well. By 1992, with many of the originals either dead (Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Peter Butterworth, Charles Hawtrey) or unwilling to be in it (Windsor, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Bernard Bresslaw and others), the disastrous attempt to revive the franchise with Carry On Columbus with a new cast of rising stars such as Julian Cary, Tony Slattery and Martin Clunes was doomed from the start. Although it doesn’t gloss over the dark side of the series (the actors’ terrible pay, the miserable off-screen personal lives endured by Williams and Hawtrey), Caroline Frost’s book remains an affectionate portrait of a mostly fondly remembered national institution.
Book review: Carry On Regardless, by Caroline Frost. Published by: Pen and Sword. Available : now
The Beano comic is now so old that there is now almost no one left alive in the UK who could not have potentially read it as a child.
The acclaimed children’s illustrator, Shirley Hughes, who died last month aged 94 apparently retained some memories of comics which “predated The Dandy and Beano.” Such people must be a rarity today. Besides even Hughes would have only just celebrated her eleventh birthday when the first Beano arrived in July 1938.
This book provides a decent and comprehensive history of Britain’s longest running comic authored by the appropriately named Iain McLaughlin, a onetime editor of The Beano himself.
This is as the title states, an unofficial history, however, and its worth mentioning that there are no images included from any issues of The Beano in this book at all. Such pictures as there are are mostly restricted to some fairly dry images of former contributors, statues of iconic characters such as Minnie the Minx and a cover which manages to evoke memories of the comic without actually including any pictures of characters at all. One wonders if there was some behind-the-scenes wrangling over this, perhaps explaining why the book was delayed from its original scheduled 2021 publication date.
It’s worth emphasising: this is still a solid, informative read. However, if you want to revisit the adventures of your favourite Beano characters be they Dennis the Menace, General Jumbo or Baby Face Finlayson, you’ll have to look elsewhere. There are no snapshots from Beano stories or even cover images inside.
Which Beano do you remember? Very old readers might just remember the very first Beanos featuring the likes of Big Eggo, Pansy Potter: The Strongman’s Daughter and Lord Snooty and his Pals. The new comic was one of three titles launched by Dundee-based publisher DC Thomson in the immediate pre-war era. The first, The Dandy (1937) featuring Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan was The Beano’s companion and rival until it folded in 2012 after an impressive 75-year run. The third comic, The Magic (1939), in contrast, never took off. Launched barely forty days before Hitler invaded Poland, the outbreak of the Second World War effectively finished The Magic off although it shared an annual with The Beano (‘The Magic-Beano Book’) for some years after its official closure in 1941.
Perhaps like my father’s generation, you’re old enough to remember The Beano’s 1950s golden age, a brilliant period for the comic which saw the launch of many of its most famous characters including Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger, the now politically incorrect Little Plum and, best of all, The Bash Street Kids which originally appeared under the Hemingway-esque moniker, When The Bell Rings.
All of these stories were still going when I myself started getting the comic in the mid-1980s now joined by the likes of Billy Whizz, Smudge and Ball Boy and as time wore on, Ivy The Terrible and Calamity James.
This is a good story about a comic which has lasted a phenomenal 84 years. Hopefully your own memories of The Beano are vivid enough that you won’t need to see pictures of Biffo the Bear, Plug or Les Pretend in order to enjoy this.
They wouldn’t call a children’s comic, Krazy, these days. But in 1976, they did. And for 79 fun-filled issues, the short-lived British comic which played host to the Krazy Gang, Cheeky, Pongo Snodgrass and Hit Kid was genuinely one of the funniest and most anarchic titles around. One particular highlight was Trevor Metcalfe’s Batman spoof, Birdman & Chicken AKA Dick Lane and Mick Mason AKA The Krazy Crusaders. in many ways, a forerunner to Bananaman which made its first appearance in DC Thomson’s Nutty very soon afterwards, every one of the hapless avian superhero duo’s adventures against foes as diverse as The Giggler, Dr .Doom, Sour-Puss, The Puzzler and The Tremble Twins. The stories begin in full colour but end up in black and white. A particular highlight is Metcalfe’s penchant for alliterative captions particularly when producing one of the story’s many cliff-hangers, for example, “Will the ruthless rogue really wreck our rash raiders on the rocks?” or “Next week – our superstars search for a scheming scalliwag – the Scarecrow!” In short: over forty years old, but still lots of fun.
The term “national treasure” is often bandied around a bit loosely these days. But make no mistake: at eighty, the actress Miriam’ Margolyes is undeniably worthy of the title. As this audiobook version of her autobiography confirms, she is a funny, sensitive and intelligent woman who has led a rich, eventful and rewarding life.
What is she actually most famous for? Well, as she herself admits, when the final curtain eventually falls, many tributes will begin by mentioning that she played Professor of Herbology, Pomora Sprout in two of the Harry Potter films. It is a small role in a star-studded saga which only came to Miriam as she entered her sixties, but such is the nature of the hugely successful franchise that virtually everyone who appeared in them, be they Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith or Robbie Coltrane, is automatically more famous for that than for anything else almost regardless of how busy or successful their career may otherwise have been. As she is not a fan of the series (she has not read any of the books nor seen any of the films, including either of the ones she is in herself) and does not like science fiction or fantasy, she admits this slightly grudgingly although she remains grateful as ever for the work and for being a small part of a story that means so much to so many people and will doubtless continue to be watched for many decades to come.
She has been astonishingly prolific though working consistently on stage, radio, TV and film since she left Cambridge University nearly sixty years’ ago. The Internet Movie Database credits her with 188 roles and while many of these were bit parts or voice only roles but this doesn’t even touch on the numerous radio, theatre and voiceover performances she has delivered and she discusses many of them here. This is a long book but even she cannot mention everything. In 2006, for example, she appeared as Mrs. Midge in one episode of the sitcom, Jam & Jerusalem and provided voices for the characters, Mrs Ashtrakhan and Rita’s Grandma in the high-profile animated films Happy Feet and Flushed Away. But I don’t think any of these roles are mentioned in this autobiography.
She had a run of 1990s Hollywood success. She was the nurse in Baz Luhmann’s Romeo + Juliet, probably the most successful Shakespeare film adaptation ever made. Oddly, one of her abiding memories of this experience was just how smelly the young star, Leonardo DiCaprio was. She was the voice of Fly, the female sheepdog in both the Babe films. She won a BAFTA for her role as Mrs. Mingott in Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence.
We have all probably seen and heard her in far more things than we realise. She was one of the most high-profile voiceover actresses of the 1980s. She was the voice of the sexy cartoon bunny on the Cadbury’s Caramel adverts (“Take it easy with Cadbury’s Caramel”). She vividly recreates her sexually suggestive vocal performance on one 1970s tobacco advert. She dubbed most of the female voices for the cult 1970s series, Monkey. I personally remember her first from watching the brilliant Blackadder II in which she played Edmund’s puritanical aunt, Lady Whiteadder, a character who, Margolyes relates, seems to have a curious effect on a certain breed of middle-aged man (although not this one). I also once saw her on stage in a production of She Stoops To Conquer alongside an unlikely combination of Sir Donald Sinden and David Essex.
But the book’s not all about her career. Margolyes talks seriously and honestly about many things. She talks about her parents, her childhood in Oxford, her university days, her being Jewish, her lesbianism, her pain and regret about her experience of ‘coming out’ to her parents and her lifelong unhappiness with her own appearance. As the name of the book suggests, she is always very honest. She acknowledges her successes (she is especially proud of her one-woman show, Dickens’ Women in which she played a huge number of roles) but admits to her failures both major (cheating on her partner of fifty years) and minor (overreacting to a parking ticket or embarrassing herself when meeting the Queen).
Readers should perhaps be warned about her surprisingly numerous sexual exploits and perhaps still more surprisingly, her eagerness to discuss them. Although a lesbian, a remarkable number of her anecdotes end with the phrase “and then I sucked him off.” This will doubtless offend some readers or listeners and amuse many more.
In fact, you could actually get very drunk playing a Miriam Margoyles Drinking Game imbibing every time the phrase “sucked off” comes up. Although too her credit, you would get drunker still if you downed a shot every time she ends a description of someone she has met during her life with some variation on the phrase “we remain friends and are still in touch to this day” or “we remained friends until they died.” She values friendship highly and has made and remained friends with many people. She says she has nearly 12,000 names in her phone book and clearly relished getting in touch with many of them to help her remember many of the events detailed in this narrative.
This, of course, suggests she is pleasant and easy to work with. It also adds credibility to her testimony against those who she does dislike who she condemns vigorously. She was treated very badly by Glenda Jackson during a union dispute during a disastrous stage production in the 1970s, singles out the late Terry Scott as a truly awful person and is venomous about the blatant sexism displayed by many of the future Goodies and Monty Python team while at Footlights at Cambridge during the 1960s.
Some people still don’t like her today, of course, for a variety of reasons namely because she is a woman who talks freely about her sexuality, because she is a lesbian, because she holds left-wing views, because she holds left-wing views but has criticized Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Brexit and failure to tackle anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, because she is Jewish and yet has condemned Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians, because she is Jewish full stop, because she is a woman who speaks her mind freely and honestly, because she is an old woman or simply because she is a woman.
This book is not for them. For the rest of us this is a golden opportunity to enjoy a well-told story, which is honest, moving and often very funny about a rich life lived to the full.
The pandemic has turned many comedians into authors.
It’s perfectly understandable. With many of the usual avenues of expression closed off to them, the lockdowns have provided a golden opportunity for many comics with a story to tell to finally put their words on paper. For many, it was either that or start a podcast. Little wonder then that, the Christmas 2021 books market is overflowing with comedy biographies. Harry Hill’s new autobiography is a weightier tome than his previous literary works, Harry Hill’s Whopping Great Joke Book, Harry Hill’s Fun Book or Harry Hill’s Bumper Book of Bloopers. But Fight! is a great read and I’d actually rank it alongside Bob Mortimer’s …And Away! as one of the very best comedy-themed books of the year.
As Harry himself admits, however, he is not for everyone. Chris Tarrant and Keeley Hawes are amongst those famous names who Harry has encountered who have not taken to his unique sense of humour. I myself have often been amazed how even during the long reign of Harry Hill’s TV Burp as one of the most consistently funny shows on British TV of the 2000s, a surprising number of people, many of whom I would have otherwise said had a good sense of humour suddenly became insufferably snooty whenever Harry’s name was mentioned. If you are one of those people, chances are, neither this book or even this review will be for you. Kindly go elsewhere.
For the rest of us, this is a treat, often funny, particularly in its early stages and revealing. Harry, after all, has a story to tell.
Today, with his winged collar, NHS spectacles and distinctly eccentric appearance, Harry Hill’s comic persona although well-established is hard to define. He looks like a middle-aged Bash Street Kid. Back in the 1970s, he was Matthew Hall, a bright young teenager busily engaged in developing smoke bombs and other homemade explosives with his other bored, science-obsessed school friends in rural Kent. “My interest in science was largely a by-product of pyromania,” he admits now, but it led directly to a medical career, something he abandoned only in the early 1990s as his love for performing live comedy took over. As Harry himself might reflect, “what were the chances of that happening eh?”
His accounts of his medical career make fascinating reading. Although he does not seem to be one of those comedians with an obvious dark side, his experiences as a doctor (including an excruciating sequence in which he makes a hash of informing a young husband that his wife had died unexpectedly) along with the premature deaths of a number of his old friends have obviously given him an appreciation of the fact that life is short.
He has also clearly retained a treasure trove of memories and physical relics of his comedy career. It is interesting to learn that he often collaborated with the likes of Alastair McGowan and Stewart Lee in the 1990s: not names one would obviously associate with him now. By the end of the decade, he was a familiar face on Channel 4. Between 2001 and 2012, he enjoyed his biggest ever success with over 160 episodes of ITV’s Saturday evening “sideways look at the week’s television,” TV Burp. The build-up to the show’s commercial breaks during which a staged fight between two often very surreal rivals, incidentally, explains the book’s title. Such showdowns included; “the Archbishop of Canterbury versus the Footballers’ Wives,” “a paw versus a claw” and “who is the best vegetarian: Heather Mills or Hitler?” During the last of these skirmishes, Harry can be clearly heard shouting, “come on, Hitler!”
In the end, the strain of trawling through hours of often terrible TV to find a few nuggets of comedy gold proved too much for Harry and the other writers and the show ended. Nothing else he has done has ever proven quite as successful. Harry proves unafraid to mention his lesser successes, which include Alien Fun Capsule (essentially a less popular version of TV Burp), Harry Hill’s Tea Time (an enjoyable but little seen Sky One show) or the fun but not especially commercial 2013 Harry Hill Movie featuring Julie Walters, Sheridan Smith and pop rock band, The Magic Numbers.
He also does not shy away from mentioning his few outright failures either: these include his short-lived X-Factor-themed musical, I Can’t Sing and disastrous stints presenting Capital Radio, an attempt to revive Matthew Kelly’s Stars In Their Eyes or the filming of a never-aired pilot of an unpromising Beadle’s About style prank show. That said, his failure to mention anything about the character Professor Branestawm or his sixteen series narrating home video clips show, You’ve Been Framed! (as far as I noticed anyway) is more surprising, however, particularly as neither of these were obvious failures. He’s has a busy life: perhaps he just forgot to mention them?
Ultimately, it is a book and a career to be proud of. Now 57, what does the future hold for the onetime Doctor Matthew Hall?
Well, there’s only one way to find out…
Book review: Fight! – Thirty Years Not Quite At The Top, by Harry Hill. Published by: Hodder Studio. Available: now.
The cover of Jimmy Carr’s book (or at least, the cover on the edition I have) shows Jimmy Carr symbolically removing a depressed version of his own face, revealing the more familiar, grinning version of the comedian underneath. The picture illustrates a central theme of the book: how twenty-two years ago, Jimmy transformed himself by abandoning his well-paid but unsatisfactory marketing job at Shell, ultimately becoming the very successful comedian and TV personality we all know today. Carr became, he argues, a much happier person as a result. Here, he argues, you can do the same, not necessarily by becoming a stand-up comedian (a career move which obviously wouldn’t suit everyone) but by identifying what you really want from life and going for it.
In many ways, the cover image would would work just as well if the two faces were reversed. For while the book is by no means deadly serious (on the contrary, there are lots of jokes throughout) this is Jimmy Carr, the host of 8 Out of 10 Cats with a silly laugh, revealing the more serious version of himself. The funny-man is revealing the more serious man behind the mask, not the other way round.
It should be a good read. Whether you personally like him or not, Jimmy Carr is a very clever and successful man with an interesting story to tell. He is perhaps not quite as funny on the page as he is as a performer, but he is not far off it.
Some of the publicity for this book describes it as Carr’s “first autobiography”. It isn’t. And this is the problem. When Carr does open up about his personal life and about his occasional struggles with mental health: his grief over the death of his mother, his hatred for his estranged father, the details of how he established his comedy career, his struggles with dyslexia, his panic attacks on stage, the book is very interesting. But this only goes so far. We learn very little about his childhood or about why he fell out with his father. There is nothing about his recent hair transplant. The book actually takes the form of a self-help book. A self-help book filled with quotations from other people, jokes, swearing and anecdotes from Carr’s own life.
Being a self-help book is not in itself a problem. Jimmy Carr has had a successful life and he wants to help others to be successful too. This is perfectly commendable.
The problem is that while some of his advice is useful much of it sounds like meaningless guff regurgitated from a thousand therapy sessions. He often spends a lot of time saying a lot which amounts to very little. Carr has done well in life and has worked hard for it. Fair enough. But he is almost evangelical in his conviction that his own formula for success can be easily transposed to everyone else.
“No one can beat you at being you…Look at society and ask ‘what am I bringing to the party?…Make your own choices, just don’t not think about it…You can have anything, but you can’t have everything…When you win, you win, but you lose you learn.” It is often difficult to square banal platitudes such as this with the more cynical persona Jimmy Carr projects on stage and on TV.
In truth, of course, it is just that: a persona. As with other darker comics such as Frankie Boyle, Carr jokes about disability, incest and rape. But this is not him. It is humour and designed to shock.
Even so, I suspect he has a few ethical blind spots. He includes ‘climate change’ on a list of things which we should not worry about as we have no control over them. The arguments in defence of some of his more controversial jokes do not really stand up to scrutiny. He knows better than to attempt to defend his involvement in a tax avoidance scheme before 2012. The scandal came close to destroying his career and he has now paid back all the money he owed. But he has never really explained why he thought it was okay in the first place.
Despite all this, I like Jimmy Carr. I have seen him live and have interviewed him once. Over the last twenty years, he has been one of our best and most consistent comedians. A great biography will probably be published about him one day. But I suspect it won’t be written by him.
Book review: Jimmy Carr – Before & Laughter. A Life-Changing Book. Published by: Quercus Publishing.
Book review: A Class Act, Life as a Working-Class Man in a Middle-Class World, by Rob Beckett. Published by: Harper Collins. Available: now.
Now in his mid-thirties, Rob Beckett is a comedy success story, a popular stand-up, podcaster and a familiar TV face from shows like Mock The Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Taskmaster. He is also something of a rarity on the British comedy circuit in that he hails from a genuinely working-class background. This is his story, not a straightforward autobiography but a look at how his life and career have been affected by his past.
Judging by his own (and, indeed, probably many people’s) criteria, Beckett passes what he himself calls, ‘the Working-Class Test’ (perhaps this should be renamed, ‘The Beckett List?) with flying colours. He grew up in south-east London. His father worked as a driver: first driving vans, then petrol tankers, then a London taxi cab, His mum is known as ‘Big Suze’. He spent his 16th birthday at Crayford dog-racing track. He didn’t eat an avocado until he was 31. On the other hand, there is a darker side to all this. At his first ever Parents’ Evening at school, his parents were told straight that “he’s never going to be a high achiever or a high flier.”
Despite this, these experiences have left him not so much angry as conflicted. The book’s cover which shows him smartly dressed and cheerfully enjoying an expensive drink while simultaneously clearly about to tuck into a plate of bangers and mash while seated in a greasy spoon café, comically reflect his mixed feelings. His background has clearly caused him no small measure of awkwardness in the past. After an early comedy success winning a trip to Adelaide after securing the Best Newcomer award at Edinburgh ten years ago, Beckett found himself stuck there with no money left to enjoy the city at all. In a later incident, after being invited to a swanky party hosted by Jimmy Carr he found himself mocked by other guests for arriving with a few cans of beers in a plastic bag. Although he gets on well with his warm and supportive family, he admits to having been occasionally been embarrassed by their behaviour. It’s true, one or two of his issues can be attributed to other things: he recognises he was self-conscious about his weight for many years. A few elements of his parents’ behaviour sound like they might be more to do with general eccentricity or old age than anything else. But he is right to recognise that most of these problems have been down to class.
Today, Rob Beckett recognises he is definitely middle-class himself. His wife is middle-class: for one thing, she had never eaten fried chicken before meeting him. He also recognises his daughters will grow up to be much posher than he is. Occasionally his insecurities return. Most dramatically, it took a near nervous breakdown shortly before lockdown to make him realise his continued success did not depend on him taking literally every job he was offered. Even as a successful comedian who had been commissioned to write this book, he admits it took him a while to realise he wasn’t being needlessly financially reckless to even consider buying himself a new laptop rather than awkwardly sharing the computer his wife was using to home school the children during lockdown.
He frequently seems amazed he is writing a book at all. And no wonder. His father didn’t even read a book until he was 43. The book in question was The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, in fact, written by Sue Townsend, a woman from a far poorer background than the Becketts.
Like her, Rob Beckett has come a very long way from where he started out from. But then, perhaps not so far, at the same time.
Chris Hallam's World View 