Only When I Laugh
Paul Merton
Having read it
★★★★★
Extremely well written and funny, in the right places; not so sure about the other side! The jokes are funny, even when he puts his own spin on his own life events and his views and observations of things add to the book’s quality and enjoyment. He’s endured some tough times but dealt with them well and this account also ends well, despite the personal events he has to deal with. A real talent.
A good passage
Corporal punishment was alive and kicking at Wimbledon College. The weapon of choice was called a ferule. It was made of hard leather and depending on the severity of the crime you might receive four, six or eight ferule strokes across the palms of your hands, administered by one of the teachers. Everyday somebody or other was getting the ferule. Either at lunchtime or directly after school. It happened to me once. I’d always struggled with mathematics, from the early days of trying to unravel the mysteries of ‘if takes three men four days to dig a hole eleven-foot deep, how much faster will the Flying Scotsman arrive at Kings Cross station given that steam pressure is 20 per cent lower than the price of eggs in Istanbul?’
A second good passage
One night Robin Williams turned up and tore the place apart with a storming forty-five minute set. I wasn’t there that night, but the comics who were still rave about it now. He did once pop down to the Store during the second half of a Comedy Store Players gig, and later came up to me and said , ‘You were good.’ It’s a tremendous lift when somebody of Robin Williams’s stature pays you a compliment, and you tend to remember it forever and then shamelessly stick it in your autobiography twenty years later. At least that’s been my experience and I can’t be the only one.
A third good passage
Here was a man running for mayor who, by his own admission, had no idea what he wanted to do if he got elected.
‘You must have some idea,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just thought I would make it up as I went along.’
This last remark was a misstep on Boris’s part, as he succumbed to the temptation to over-egg the pudding. I smiled inwardly at his rather clumsy attempt to convince me that he was that rarest of all political animals: the politician who cared nothing about politics. Boris’s subsequent political career shows a very skilful operator indeed, and had I believed his performance that day at Lord’s [the cricket ground], there would have at least been one genuine fool taking part in our brief conversation.