So Me Cassette

Like a lot of autobiographies, So Me is more interesting and insightful on the period of struggle before Graham Norton became famous than on a life which has become a constant round of professional encounters with celebrities. He is funny on his unsuccessful career as an actor and rather touching on the friendships that date back to the years he spent as a waiter. Under a surface of camp glibness, he is surprisingly evocative about the London of the 1980s--certain key locations of his life such as the restaurant where he worked or the slum high-rise where he lived are entirely present here. He is honest about his flaws and moving about friends who taught him to be better--for example, a commune where he lived for a year in San Francisco gets a tribute. His later life--his cult success as a comedian and his discovery that what he really was is a chat-show host--is recorded with occasional insight. He is attractively unapologetic about his taste for smut; this is who he is and what he does, and we can take it or leave it.--Roz KaveneyRead More