During a visit to my sister at University in Norwich, to wish her a Happy 20th Birthday in advance, I stumbled into a new Borders bookstore in a mall.
Inside there were two books which I really would like to read. Both of them hardcover and thusly, both unacceptably expensive by my standards.
Rik Mayall’s autobiography ‘Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ’ and Chris Patten’s ‘Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths About World Affairs’.
Rik Mayall’s been a part of my life since I was just a kid, he read Grimm’s tales with enthusiasm and a contagious sense of mischief that brought them to life for me (for the are dark tales in their own right). His TV series ‘Bottom’ formed a bedrock of slapstick/lowbrow humour for my teenage years and almost anyone can appreciate ‘The Young Ones’.
There was a long period of time, where any member of my family could reduce me to fits of laughter by reproducing two sound effects from a ‘Bottom’ episode in which Richie and Eddie assault a gasman with repeated and alternating blows from a frying pan and a fist: “Doosh! Dong! Doosh! Dong!” It’s a lot funnier than it sounds, their timing is impeccable and no one understands violent slapstick humour like Ade Edminson and Rik Mayall.
His performance in the film “Drop Dead Fred” is also superlative.
The title is exactly the sort of thing you can imagine him saying, which makes it all the better. It comes from his own response to returning to the Hospital from which he had escaped after a near-lethal accident.
He was transferred to a hospital, where to his horror a doctor told him that to drain the blood that had pooled in his skull for seven weeks, the top of his head would have to be removed. Then, providentially, a scan revealed that the blood had disappeared. “It had just gone! Overnight or something. It was a miracle!” Hence his boast that he is better than Christ: “I was dead for five days and Christ was only dead for three. There’s no quibbling with that … and I rose again on Bank Holiday Monday.
Taken from the Times article concerning the release of his autobiography.
The second book, Patten’s “last dispatch” promises to be a good read. Chris Patten may have spent the last decade or so “with both trotters in the trough” to paraphrase Hacker in Yes Minister, but on matters such as China I believe he’s arguably a very insightful commentator. I believe he fundamentally understood what China was (a monarchy) and tailored his policy towards them well during his stewardship in Hong Kong.
Either way, I’m interested to read his thoughts. For a long while I thought he was the only Tory I’d vote for (assuming Blair, Brown, Straw et all spontaneously combusted and Labour returned to the bad old days) but I’m not so sure I’m that keen on his politics anymore. Should be an entertaining read.
Thankfully, Amazon’s prices are fully 1/2 of those at Borders. I may buy both books after all.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at October 3, 2005 02:13 AM