I read It’s Not What You Think and Memoires of a Fruitcake over a week when my brain wouldn’t take in fiction and I was putting off starting Pigeon English properly. I managed to be almost totally oblivious of Chris Evans during his rise and subsequent fall; I wasn’t a radio listener particularly and I think when I started to listen again as an adult, I mainly heard Zoe Ball on Radio 1, so that must have been after he left. I wasn’t interested in TFI and I didn’t watch breakfast TV (preferred my bed till the last moment!) so he wasn’t really on my radar at all. I did, however, hear his very first Radio 2 drivetime by chance and his first breakfast show on Radio 2 too. I even heard the infamous “we’re not here next week, we’re off to have a think”. He’s kept me company through the mornings of my pregnancy with Freddie and through the mornings of grief afterwards, when I heard dead baby in every song. I’ve grown to rather like him in that time, he seemed to have settled into a person who can laugh at himself and take life and luck just as seriously as it deserves.
These were the first celeb autobiographies I had read; I enjoyed the first the most because it appealed to the ‘boy makes good’ work ethic side of me. I really enjoyed reading about a boy and a young man who worked hard and saw opportunities and made it happen. It’s easy to see a celeb and think they just got lucky and this was the story of someone who properly made it happen, most through balls and effort rather than looks (!) or luck.
The second was a harder read, mainly because it was more his fall from grace than anything inspiring and I’m not one for that sort of story. I think he still feels like he has a lot to apologise for and is fairly hard on himself. Mind you, reading it, he did behave like an arse – but you know, we all make mistakes. What I liked about both books was the comments he makes on his industries. He doesn’t hold back on how he feels about radio or televsion (or Jonathan Ross!) and I found it interesting to get a glimpse of inside those sorts of jobs and environments.
Overall, both worth a read, epecially if you need to zone out from novels for a while. Funny, entertaining and enlightening.
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