Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #747 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

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

Ends a bit too soon
I'm not going to go into a great deal of depth here as there are already 96 reviews on this product, so I'll just give you my (short) opinion - brilliant!

I've been a big fan of Kay for a while now and reading his heart-warming memories from his early life, written in a stand-up story kind of way I now have more of an in-sight into how he got into the show biz career he is so famous for now and have a history of all of the crappy jobs he had beforehand and the funny tales that accompany them. My only complaint is that the book finishes way too early as it doesn't really touch on his stand up, A Peter Kay Thing, Phoenix Nights or Max & Paddy days or his relationships with Paddy McGuiness or Dave Spikey. Hopefully this will mean that a follow-up is in the works (which might explain why he hasn't done much for the past year or so!). I normally hate reading biographies and auto-biographies, but this one I couldn't put down. An excellent and hilarious read.

I have a lot of time for Peter Kay but...
this is hugely below par. I get the feeling a bit of judicious editing could have turned this into a half-decent book, but maybe now he's just too important for people to say no to him too often. The stories were ok but the writing was appalling, most of the sentences were very short, and the phrase "Im only joking, of course" was used once too often for the autobiography of a comedian. We know you're joking, thats your job ! Current sales figures at 750k hint to me that he will be enouraged to write more after this in the same style, when really those figures are related to his general popularity that can onl be diminished after this.

A Bit Disappointed
I am a big fan of Peter Kay, and thoroughly enjoy his stand up routines and Pheonix Nights.

But I have to say that although there are some laugh out loud moments in the book, overall when I finished it, I felt a little disappointed.

It felt like Kaye was trying to say 'look what I went through before I got famous, I have n't half done well'.

The book seemed to jump around a quite a lot, and lacked real flow.

On the plus side, it is very easy to read, and in parts it feels like you are having a conversation with Kaye, which is great for a bedtime book.

I really wanted to like it, but when I finished the book, I felt slighty deflated and said to myself "is that it".

If you have seen his stand up routines, particularly from the 'my mum wants a bungalow' tour, then you have heard most of the stuff in here.

For someone whose scripts for Pheonix nights, were insightful and funny, that got to the real heart of northern working class life and clubland, this book is a real let down.