Sunday 12 February 2012

My **** Life So Far by Frankie Boyle



This is the autobiography of Frankie Boyle from TV's Mock the Week. As you'd expect from the title of the book and from Frankie's comedy style as seen from his TV and stand-up work he views life negatively. However this doesn't mean the book is dour and depressing because he has interspersed his humour into it as much as possible. Some of this had me laughing out loud. For example he relates a story where he shimmies down a drainpipe to avoid his flatmate who he wants to avoid, only to get caught by the police who then march him back to collaborate his story with his flat mate. He then has to tell his flat mate how much he hates him. 

But other bits of the book went off on tangents as he inserted some of his on-the-shelf comedic material into the book. For example there are ideas for TV reality shows of the future quickly followed by a couple of scripts for sketches that never made it to TV. As you'd expect some of this is funny but it is off topic and it does mean the biographical story can be lost which is a shame because I found the stories relating to his life, such as the above drainpipe story, to be better than the shoe-horned insertions of his previous material. 

So there were a lot of very funny bits that made it an enjoyable read in places but the meandering structure of the book, especially later on, makes it a bit confusing. 

(This book is available to buy here.)

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