Funny Memoir

Daughter of Major Derek Hargreaves (spy?) and June Hargreaves (spy's wife?) sister of Sara (born to be Head Girl) and Ben (the usurper), Jenny's comedy career took off via drama school, cider, sausage rolls, sleeping with men who looked like they lived under a carpet, punk poetry, anorexia, bedsit misery, waitressing and not really having a clue about anything. This was a world before microphones, mobile phones, before everyone gave up smoking or started taking coke. Jenny Eclair was on the comedy circuit before there really was a comedy circuit.

Michael’s first book ended with his big break at the 2006 Royal Variety Performance. Waking up the next morning in the tiny rented flat he shared with his wife, Kitty, and their one-year-old son, he was beyond excited about the new glamorous world of show business. Unfortunately, he was also clueless. In A Funny Life, Michael honestly and hilariously shares the highs and the lows of his rise to the top and desperate attempts to stay there.

When satirist John Clarke died, in 2017, many people mourned his passing as if they had lost a friend or a member of the family. Many of us felt we grew up with him. After all, for the best part of half a century, since he burst into our lives as Fred Dagg in 1974, he was a performer, an actor, a writer, a satirist and as a commentator in both Australia and New Zealand. In this fascinating memoir, Lorin Clarke tells the story of growing up with her famous father, her art historian mother Helen and her little sister Lucia. Much has been written about John Clarke, but this is the insider’s view.

Ade Edmondson smashed onto the comedy circuit in the 1980s, stormed The Comedy Store and, alongside Rik Mayall, brought anarchy to stage and screen. How did a child brought up in a strict Methodist household – and who spent his formative years incarcerated in repressive boarding schools – end up joining the revolution? Well, he is part Norse. Could it be his berserker heritage? With wisdom, nostalgia and uniquely observed humour, Ade traces his journey through life and comedy.

Michael J. Fox abandoned high school to pursue an acting career, but went on to receive honorary degrees from several universities and garner the highest accolades for his acting, as well as for his writing. In his new book, he inspires and motivates graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize their abilities, and roll with the punches -- all with his trademark optimism, warmth, and humor.

Jack and Michael Whitehall perform their laugh-out-loud autobiography Him & Me as a unique dual-voiced comedy audiobook, filled with ad-libs, asides, and comic dialogue to create a uniquely funny listen. Jack and Michael open up the rich and plentiful family lore archives on topics such as Jack’s nanny’s enormous feet, Michael’s lifetime touchline ban from Jack’s prep-school and the Whitehall collection of downright weird and eccentric relatives.

As far back as he can remember James Corden has only ever wanted to be in one place: in front of you, doing something to make you laugh, cry, shout, or giggle uncontrollably. At the age of 4, he grandstanded throughout his baby sister’s christening, standing on a chair in front of the whole congregation, pulling faces and cracking everyone up. Despite himself, the vicar was impressed. And from then on he couldn’t get enough of the spotlight, even when it always seemed to avoid him. Throughout his teens, he and his Dad trudged up and down towards London....

Hello! I’m Brian Limond, aka Limmy. You might know me from Limmy’s Show. Or you might not know me at all. Don’t worry if you don’t. They asked me to write a book about mental health, because I sometimes talk about my mental health in tweets and interviews, like suicidal thoughts and anxiety, and what I’ve done to try to deal with it. I said to them, oh, I don’t know if I could fill a whole book with just that. But how’s about I write a general autobiography type of thing, and all the mental health stuff will naturally appear along the way?

She's spent thirty-five years in the public eye: 'Vanessa's Friends Say She's Drinking Custard!' Vanessa seizes her chance to set the record straight in this warm, witty, intensely human story. She spares no one's blushes, including her own. How could someone so clever make such cataclysmic mistakes? Vanessa's often wrong, but always relatable. She puts the 'Oh my goodness, I can never unread that paragraph!' into celebrity autobiography.

John Cooper Clarke is a phenomenon: Poet Laureate of Punk, rock star, fashion icon, TV and radio presenter, social and cultural commentator, reluctant national treasure. At 5 feet 11 inches (116lb, 32in chest, 27in waist), in trademark suit jacket, skin-tight drainpipes and dark glasses, with jet-black back-combed hair and mouth full of gold teeth, he is instantly recognisable. As a writer his voice is equally unmistakable and his inimitable dry Salford drawl shines through the prose.

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.

Ziwe made a name for herself by asking guests like Alyssa Milano, Fran Lebowitz, and Chet Hanks direct questions. In Black Friend, she turns her incisive perspective on both herself and the culture at large. Throughout the book, Ziwe combines pop-culture commentary and personal stories that grapple with her own (mis)understanding of identity. From a hilarious case of mistaken identity via a jumbotron to a terrifying fight-or-flight encounter in the woods, Ziwe raises difficult questions for comedic relief.

This book contains tales of dead dads, pretend dead dads, getting barred from an osteopath's, getting arrested, sex crimes and forgiveness. I used to be addicted to boys and alcohol and then men and alcohol and then some other things. I was a little unhinged. I've got some great stories about when I was as mad as cheese and then some more stories about how I got less mad and more happy. If that's the sort of thing you're after, please pick me up and take me to bed (that's the book speaking so a little joke there).

At last, the full story behind Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman's epic romance, including stories, portraits, and the occasional puzzle. How did they do it? They came from completely different families, endured a significant age difference, and were separated by the gulf of several social strata. Megan loved books and art history; Nick loved hammers. But much more than these seemingly unsurpassable obstacles were the values they held in common: respect, decency, the ability to mention genitalia in almost any context, and an abiding obsession with the songs of Tom Waits.

Corey Taylor has seen a lot of unbelievable things. The Grammy Award-winning singer of Slipknot and Stone Sour's curiosity has drawn him into situations that would’ve sent most people screaming scared and running for the hills. Corey’s ballsy enough to go into the darkness and deal with the consequences though. As a result, he’s seen ghosts up close and personal, whether it be while combing through an abandoned house in his native Iowa as a child or recording an album in the fabled Houdini Hollywood Hills mansion.

To see the world through Jenny Slate's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gases that are science gases, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time.

Gary Janetti, the writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time, and creator of one of the most wickedly funny Instagram accounts there is, now turns his skills into a hilarious, and poignant audiobook chronicling the pains and indignities of everyday life. Gary spends his 20s in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him.

Growing up, Jenny Pentland’s life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother’s smash hit series, Roseanne, were drawn from Pentland’s early family life in working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr’s success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to star-studded Hollywood—with its toxic culture of money, celebrity, and prying tabloids that was destabilizing for a child in grade school.

Adam Fletcher's life hates him.... That's how it feels since he lost his girlfriend of nine years, his confidence, hair, and home. But then he receives an email from a mysterious stranger offering him a free holiday of a lifetime. It's too good to be true. But then what does he have to lose? So he says yes. And then things gets strange....

For comedian and content creator Manon Mathews, comedy is life. But it took more than luck for her hilarious antics on Vine to open the door to her career. It took years of routinely embarrassing herself, improv classes, some stints as an amateur stand-up comic, unrelenting dedication, and one life-altering night out that forced her to change her ways. This set her on the path to manifesting her dream life.