Product Description

The number one bestselling autobiography of Britain's most popular comedian

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9535 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-02
• Released on: 2006-10-02
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Synopsis
Peter Kay's unerring gift for observing the absurdities and eccentricities of family life has earned himself a widespread, everyman appeal. These vivid observations coupled with a kind of nostalgia that never fails to grab his audience's shared understanding, have earned him comparisons with Alan Bennett and Ronnie Barker. In his award winning TV series', he creates worlds populated by degenerate, bitter, useless, endearing and always recognisable characters which have attracted a huge and loyal following. In many ways, he's an old fashioned kind of comedian and the scope and enormity of his fanbase reflects this. He doesn't tell jokes about politics or sex, but rather rejoices in the far funnier areas of life: elderly relatives and answering machines, dads dancing badly at weddings, garlic bread and cheesecake, your mum's HRT...His autobiography is full of this kind of humour and nostalgia, beginning with Kay's first ever driving lesson, taking him back through his Bolton childhood, the numerous jobs he held after school and leading up until the time he passed his driving test and found fame.

About the Author
Peter Kay was born in Bolton in 1973. After leaving school with a GCSE in art, he held a series of jobs including working as a cinema usher, mobile disc jockey, in a factory packing toilet rolls, garage attendant and in a bingo hall.
After a Btec in Performance Studies, he went on to win the 1997 So You Think You're Funny contest at the Edinburgh Festival and was nominated for the Perrier Award the following year.
Peter Kay's first TV series was That Peter Kay Thing, followed by Phoenix Nights series 1 snd 2. The series Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere was a spin off from Phoenix Nights. Peter Kay has played a cameo role in Coronation Street, has appeared in the recent series of Doctor Who and recently starred as Roger DeBris in the smash hit Mel Brooks musical The Producers in Manchester.

Customer Reviews

Buy it - Very Funny - Laugh out Loud
This was a great read and i finished it in two days! I loved all the little stories many of which reminded me of my own child hood and the strange, weird and odd things that happen to all of us.

YIPEE - what a easy funny book

Very funny if you're a fan!
I found this book to be very enjoyable. It is very much a comedy, lots of small stories (like his stand-up) which run in no particular order.
Its seems quite randomly put together but it works really well. After reading some of the other reviews on here, most "serious" readers are over looking the fact that this book is a comedy. its not a "warts n all" style biography.

I must say if you are not a fan of his stand-up and phoenix nights, you are not going to like it. If you like That Peter Kay thing you'll love it as most of the episodes from that are in this book. The book does seem to end rather suddenly which is a down point for me, I would have liked to hear some stories about things after he was famous. Anyway, a very good read well worth a fiver or how cheap you can get it for!

Mediocre
I was a bit of a slow convert to Peter Kay, and I'm also pretty slow to pick up this book given how long it's been out - but hey. I'm an individual. I'm now a fan of the big man and finally got round to reading this book. And I have to say, it's pretty mediocre. It's fairly well-written and is easy to read, but a lot of it seems to be a regurgitation of his stand up shows, all the little asides he includes are the jokes he uses on stage. So it basically has the feel of one of his acts, but on the page. And to me, that was the problem with the book. It was trying too hard to be a 'funny' book, and didn't really have that much detail about Peter's life. It was more a 'steps to success' book than a true
autobiography.

Peter only mentions parts of his childhood which had some relation to comedy in some way. There's very little intimate detail, and only a very fleeting peek into his love life, and how he met the woman that is now his wife. So although it was an enjoyable book, it wasn't a very detailed autobiography, and it's unlikely you'll finish it and feel like you know a lot more about the man behind the comedy. Unfortunate but true.