From Tom Jones to the green grass of Old Trafford,via Sue Perkins’s diaristic mash-up and Steve Coogan’s entertaining confessionalReports of the death of the celebrity memoir are much exaggerated, if this year’s giant crop is anything to proceed by. The new trend? The hybrid memoir that is actually a manifesto, and 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, and a FAQs section and virtually every paragraph punctuated by the spectacles logo. It has a story 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 if the voiceover), or as a “cluster-fuck omniflop”. And how satisfying to read approximately just how long it took the producers of Bake Off to realise that “watching kind people obtain kind cakes is all you need”.
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Source: theguardian.com