Comedy and Error

Celebrity memoirs come in all shapes and sizes but the current fashion runs in favour of hardback compendiums of tabloid tittle-tattle costing about £17.99 rushed out in time for Christmas. Russell Brand's two memoirs - My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2: This Time it's Personal - are honourable exceptions which you would almost describe as genre-redefining if you thought for one second that anyone could begin to replicate them. They are written with a flair for storytelling and a deep love of language. But more often it's Katie Price talking about Dane Bowers and the difficulties of renewing the MOT on a pink mini.

Simon Day is probably best remembered for his part(s) in The Fast Show, the wildly successful sketch show which occupied the same sort of cultural space in the 90s that Little Britain has done more recently - that is to say, funny, interesting, tired, populist, original and unoriginal. But before that he was, briefly and successfully, a stand-up comedian in the guise of Tommy Cockles. But before even that he was a bit of everything, from gardener to builder to thief. Throughout he has lived with addiction in one form or another - whether it's drugs or an equally destructive obsession with pub fruit machines.

What's most rewarding about this very funny memoir is the honesty about the days and years of aimlessness and depression that go to make up any life - celebrity or otherwise. And whilst there is still an element of dizzying overnight success in Simon Day's career (his first stand-up gig led to him being spotted by Vic and Bob) what's different about this memoir is the way that he gives as much attention to the deep troughs of under achievement and purposelessness as he does to the pleasant uplands of 'having made it'.