From Tom Jones to the green grass of Old Trafford, via Sue Perkins’s diaristic mash-up and Steve Coogan’s entertaining confessional
Reports of the death of the celebrity memoir are much exaggerated, if this year’s giant crop is anything to go by. The new trend? The hybrid memoir that is actually a manifesto, a diary, a collection of essays or even a long list of life tips. The best example of this genre is Spectacles by Sue Perkins (Michael Joseph). She takes the quirky route with transcripts of dialogue, short diary entries, a FAQs section and virtually every paragraph punctuated by the spectacles logo. It has a narrative but it doesn’t shove it in your face. She’s honest, real and a decent writer.
Particularly enjoyable is her characterisation of BBC1’s failed game show, Don’t Scare the Hare (for which she provided the voiceover), as a “cluster-fuck omniflop”. And how satisfying to read about just how long it took the producers of Bake Off to realise that “watching nice people make nice cakes is all you need”.
From the more classic autobiographies, it’s worth picking up Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted (Century) for the 1970s pudding-bowl haircut pictures of him alone. This is a simple, readable confessional – “I was happy with Anna, but had endless flings”; “I went to a party, took two tabs and went bonkers” – interspersed with Coogan’s trademark caustic asides and loads of telly and performance insight. Coke, drink, Spitting Image, Alan Partridge... If you love Coogan, this delivers.
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Particularly enjoyable is her characterisation of BBC1’s failed game show, Don’t Scare the Hare (for which she provided the voiceover), as a “cluster-fuck omniflop”. And how satisfying to read about just how long it took the producers of Bake Off to realise that “watching nice people make nice cakes is all you need”.
From the more classic autobiographies, it’s worth picking up Steve Coogan’s Easily Distracted (Century) for the 1970s pudding-bowl haircut pictures of him alone. This is a simple, readable confessional – “I was happy with Anna, but had endless flings”; “I went to a party, took two tabs and went bonkers” – interspersed with Coogan’s trademark caustic asides and loads of telly and performance insight. Coke, drink, Spitting Image, Alan Partridge... If you love Coogan, this delivers.
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