Books wot I just red

Given the amount of work that I've got through lately I'm totally gobsmacked at the realisation that I have, somehow, managed to read a few books over the past couple of weeks.

I'm a kind of "real world" person -- I don't care much for dramatic fiction (the Bible, for instance), nor almanacs or reference works (ever heard of the Internet?); but I do enjoy (auto)biographies and practical tomes.


Hancock's Last Stand: The Series That Never Was, by Edward Joffe, tells the story of Tony Hancock's last days in Australia in 1968. Always a troubled man, the book chronicles the timeframe of a lifelong depressive heading down under to make a new TV series whilst struggling to come to terms with both his alcoholism and dwindling popularity in his home country.

Faced with the prospect of long seperation from his sometime partner Joan Le Mesurier and suffering a total crisis of confidence, Hancock arrives in Sydney and almost immediately slips into a routine of continual drinking, oversleeping and dismal performances only occasionally tempered thanks primarily to the efforts of the author, the producer of the series.

Whilst probably not of broad appeal (I don't know many people my age, let alone younger who know Hancock's work to any great extent), this insighful tome is certainly worthy of a read if you've any interest in mental health or addicitive issues and is a fascinating insight into the final weeks of the man once considered Britain's premier comedian.



On The Edge - Richard Hammond is another story altogether. For those of you that don't know, Hammond is a presenter of Top Gear, a motoring show shown on the UK's BBC2 channel, who had a rather bad accident whilst driving a jet powered car in 2006.

If you did know that, don't read this book. If you didn't know that, don't read this book. Why? Because the paragraph that you've just read summarises 95% of the content.

Following the de rigueur introductory chapters covering birth to celebrity, we are then subjected to hundreds of pages detailing the crash and the aftermath from his perspective. And his wife's perspective. And his budgie's perspective. The bloke who lives three doors along and bumped into him once gives his point of view as well, as does the postman, baker and occasional colleague.

It's badly written, hideously edited and stupendously boring. I don't think I've ever been so annoyed at spending my hard-earned money on an ink pregnated dead tree for a long, long time.


In complete contrast, Slash: The Autobiography charts the life of the Guns N' Roses star using interesting, fluid writing (thanks in no small way, I suspect, to co-author Anthony Bozza), giving you enough detail to comprehend the growth and development of a rock icon whilst avoiding the monotonous "and an hour later I woke up again and had another poo" nonsense of Hammond's book.

Telling the story of how Slash turns chaos into organised dishevellery in an almost Alchemistic way, the book is a fascinating insight into the world of growing up in LA in the 1970's. The jacket reads "I've always had to do things my way; I play guitar my way; I've taken myself to the edges of life my way; I've gotten clean my way; and I'm still here. Whether I deserve to be is another story."

And one that's worth reading.