Why celebrity memoirs rule publishing

One celebrity memoir made our reviewer cry – but the rest just bored him to tears. What would reading 11 of them in four days do to his brain?


John Harris The Guardian, Monday 13 December 2010

Harris contemplates his bestseller reading list. Photograph: Sam Frost


Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas famously begins: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." The first sentence of The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, goes like this: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
But never mind all that. Life & Laughing is the autobiography of Michael McIntyre, the 34-year-old comedian who is now arguably as successful as any standup has ever been. At the time of writing, it has sold 169,210 copies. People like it; at my local WH Smith, it seems to be selling like cut-price gold. It starts: "I am writing this on my new 27-inch iMac. I have ditched my PC and gone Mac . . . It's gorgeous and enormous and I bought it especially to write my book (the one you're reading now)."

While we're here, consider also the enticing kick-off passage of My Story, by Dannii Minogue: "Having a baby; joyful, a quiet celebration with family. An intimate and magical moment of discovery shared with your partner. Hmmm . . . I wish!" She goes on: "The car is stuck in rainy London traffic and, as usual, I'm running on what some of my closer friends would call 'Minogue Time', which basically means I'm late." This does not quite get me hooked, though I persevere. But more of that later.

To begin The Woman I Was Born To Be, that blessed national treasure Susan Boyle goes for a gnomic statement of the obvious: "My name is Susan Boyle." Cheryl Cole's Through My Eyes commences no less prosaically – "In 2009, we decided to take a break from Girls Aloud. During this time an opportunity came for me to make a solo album" – but it's essentially a picture book, so maybe I should leave off.

Anyway, these books are not only dominating the bestseller lists at he moment, but my life too. The plan is simple enough: to collect these less-than-literary works, resolve to get beyond the first sentences, and thereby take the national pulse. So, I duly line up the memoirs of McIntyre, Minogue, Alan Sugar, Chris Evans et al – along with the supposed work of a fictional meerkat – and get to it.
Read John Harris' full piece at The Guardian.