October 12, 2008This Christmas's big celebrity autobiographies
The Sunday Times reviews by Roland White
You should properly read this after the 9pm watershed, because we are about to discuss a rather delicate matter - Roger Moore's penis.
And it's no good raising your eyebrow in surprise like that, Roger, you mentioned it first, right there in chapter one of your autobiography, My Word Is My Bond (Michael O'Mara £18.99). “Still in my eighth year,” he writes, “I complained to Mum that my ‘wee man' was sore.” The next thing you know, a doctor is bouncing the wee man up and down on the end of a pencil and before long Roger is being wheeled into hospital to be circumcised. Why, hello, Mr Bond, we've been expecting you.
As it turned out, this was the future screen star's first taste of showbusiness. For the next week, members of his gang queued up for a look, and a flasher on Wimbledon Common asked, unsuccessfully, for a private viewing, introducing himself with the words: “Your friend says you have a big dicky.”
I mention all this to highlight a newish fashion in celebrity biography. I've not actually read the memoirs of Noël Coward, but I'm prepared to bet that his foreskin barely got a mention. Yet Moore's revelation is very much the modern way. I would even say he is at the cutting edge, but in the circumstances that would be unkind.
And it's no good raising your eyebrow in surprise like that, Roger, you mentioned it first, right there in chapter one of your autobiography, My Word Is My Bond (Michael O'Mara £18.99). “Still in my eighth year,” he writes, “I complained to Mum that my ‘wee man' was sore.” The next thing you know, a doctor is bouncing the wee man up and down on the end of a pencil and before long Roger is being wheeled into hospital to be circumcised. Why, hello, Mr Bond, we've been expecting you.
As it turned out, this was the future screen star's first taste of showbusiness. For the next week, members of his gang queued up for a look, and a flasher on Wimbledon Common asked, unsuccessfully, for a private viewing, introducing himself with the words: “Your friend says you have a big dicky.”
I mention all this to highlight a newish fashion in celebrity biography. I've not actually read the memoirs of Noël Coward, but I'm prepared to bet that his foreskin barely got a mention. Yet Moore's revelation is very much the modern way. I would even say he is at the cutting edge, but in the circumstances that would be unkind.
To read the full story which includes Dawn French's breasts in her memoir Dear Fatty (Century £18.99), Julie Walters toe curling tales in That's Another Story: The Autobiography (Weidenfeld £18.99) , Parky: My Autobiography (Hodder £20), and others then link to the Sunday Times online.
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