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Only When I Laugh: My Autobiography
Only When I Laugh: My Autobiography
Nov 7, 2024 5:05 PM

Author:Paul Merton

Only When I Laugh: My Autobiography

Known for his intelligent and often surreal humour, Paul Merton’s weekly appearances on BBC1’s Have I Got News For You – as well as Radio 4’s Just A Minute and his travel documentaries – have seen him become an artfully rebellious fixture in our lives for over 25 years.

He also has a real story to tell. In ONLY WHEN I LAUGH, his rich and beautifully-observed autobiography, Paul takes us on an evocative journey from his working-class Fulham childhood to the present day.

Whether writing about school days, his run-ins with the nuns and other pupils; his disastrous first confession; his meatpacking job; taking acid; leaving home to live in bedsit; his early brushes with the opposite sex – and not forgetting his repeated attempts to break into the world of comedy – Paul’s writing is always funny, poignant and revealing. And when his star finally ascends in the atmospherically drawn 1980s alternative cabaret scene there is a sense of excitement, energy, camaraderie, momentum and dramatic impending success…

…And then CRASH! In an unflinching and brilliantly written section that defines the book, we experience the disorienting and terrifying sustained manic episode that he suffered which landed him in a psychiatric hospital. These, and other tougher moments, are written about candidly and with sensitivity and honesty.

Yet throughout ONLY WHEN I LAUGH, Paul Merton succeeds in telling his life story entertainingly, with warmth, humour and a big bucket load of wit. Ultimately uplifting, it is the story of a fascinating life, brilliantly told – and one of the best memoirs of the year.

Reviews

Crammed with laugh-out-loud moments

—— Daily Telegraph

A rollicking good read

—— Bruce Dessau , Evening Standard

A thoughtful, understated memoir

—— Joe Moran , Guardian

Witty and enjoyable

—— Robert Elms , BBC Radio London

Compelling

—— Chortle

Fascinating

—— Ray Darcy RTE Radio

A simple, readable confessional … interspersed with Coogan’s trademark caustic asides and loads of telly and performance insight… If you love Coogan, this delivers

—— Observer - Books of 2015 in review

Self-aware, deferential and modest

—— Times Literary Supplement

Scholars of rock and roll still revere him for Awopbopaloobop, a passionate argument for the primacy of the three-minute pop song...A book ostensibly about popular music, but really about youth, innocence and rebellion

—— Observer

The Hollywood Brats are the greatest band I’ve ever seen

—— Keith Moon

Britain’s great lost punk band

—— Q-Magazine

So colourful, so comical, so damn bitchy... hilarious

—— Tony Fletcher , iJamming

Matheson writes with the jagged verve he once sought from his band.

—— Kevin Canfield , Washington Post

Biographical subject and author have found their perfect match.

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

One Man Band rumbles along… Welles in his middle years is a more engaging prospect than most artists at a similar point. He has been lucky to have Callow as a biographer, balancing warmth with skepticism, fondness with reproof.

—— Anthony Quinn , Guardian

This richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies

—— CGA Magazine

Rogan does an excellent job of trying to work out what makes The Kinks’ enigmatic frontman tick whilst charting the tumultuous career of a band whose idiosyncratic but brilliant hits are currently enjoying a renaissance

—— Mail on Sunday

This book is a good, solid, factually based read throughout… I imagine nearing six decades of recording history to be squeezed into one book is a task beyond the scope of a lot of authors, but this has been done rather well by Johnny Rogan… Excellent and complex.

—— Reg Seward , Nudge

An engaging and very accessible history book about our modern artistic achievements that, provocatively, also debunks some of the very icons it praises.

—— Simon Copeland , The Sun
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