Billy
Pamela Stephenson
Supposedly psychological biography of comedian Billy Connolly by
his wife. A string of anecdotes with occasional banal commentary
and Jean felt that all kinds of stories were not being revealed.
Jean's sister-in-law had dropped this in the bath and Jean wished
it had stayed there.
Jean 29/9/02
Commercially a huge success so anyone in marketing will tell you
that having Billy Connolly's famous psychoanalyst wife write his
biography was a great idea. Andrew wished someone else had
written it because it comes across as a 300-page press release.
Of course he's been successful but it's written as if he's never
done anything wrong in his life, Andrew felt that she was being
protective of him, still showing only the stage persona which
most of us know anyway. All the relationships described seem to
be from the view of the bad they've done to poor Billy and how
well he's done to put this behind him and be such a likeable
rogue and "the funniest man on the planet". Many people don't get
a chance to put their case (a lot of them are dead) but a more
dispassionate biographer would have dug around to find someone
with something more interesting to say than "gosh, he's my
bestest friend and he's really, really funny".
It's just not very
well written, the alarm bells ring when you find that he can do
too many things "brilliantly" (cooking) or has a "you're all
idiots if you do that" view on the things he can't do (skiing,
the internet) and the Celebrity Insight bits at the front of each
chapter are nauseating. Best seller though, so what does this
reviewer know?
Andrew 29/6/03
The frames have
gone all funny - click to make it good.