Me, me, me memoirs! From 'revelations' about fridge magnets to toe-curling sexual confessions. JAN MOIR says 2012's celeb autobiographies were the vainest ever
By JAN MOIR
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Me, me, me! It’s all about me! Yes, the 2012 crop of autobiographies by our favourite stars reaches new heights of sustained celebrity navel-gazing.
Egged on by the delicious thought that we are desperate for every detail about their marvellous lives, our heroes and heroines thunder on (and on and on) about every aspect of their being, from their favourite fridge magnet to their latest gastrointestinal upsets.
As always, they need you to know how awkward and uncertain their teens were. They want to present their side of that messy divorce or band split or scandal.
What not to read: From Tulisa's Honest - My Story So Far to Cheryl Cole's My Story, Jan Moir gives her verdict on the biggest celebrity autobiographies of the year
On every page, they are desperate to be loved, frantic to be adored, keen for you to buy their product.
So they spill. They share. They dish. And above all else, they want you to see the Real Me.
HONEST — My Story So Far by Tulisa (Headline £20)
Tulisa sure ain’t had it easy. She was taunted about her mother’s mental illness when she was five (‘Your mum’s a loony’). Then her parents’ marriage ended when she was nine.
That Christmas, Tulisa stayed with her father and remembers his new girlfriend walking around ‘in a coat belonging to my mum, which she had taken out of the wardrobe’. A poignant and telling detail a little girl never forgot.
Tulisa’s adolescence is hair-raising, particularly when she is allowed to remove herself from a strict North London school into a wilder one attended by her cousin, Dappy. She gets into fights and seems to relish them slightly more than she should (‘I matched her punch for punch’).
Then she stops going to school for a year and carries a piece of wooden curtain rail with her as a weapon. By 13 her world is fuelled by alcohol, drugs, sex and violence. She suffers from dermatillomania (picking her face until it bleeds) and self-harms by cutting. She is sexually assaulted after a ‘friend’ spikes her drink. Her life is like ‘an episode of EastEnders’.
At another new school, however, she cheers up by challenging the tough girls on her first day. She joins a bag-snatching gang (‘they called me Whitey, they respected me’) and adds: ‘I never said I was an angel.’
She finds redemption of a sort when she, Dappy and her boyfriend Fazer form a hip-hop group and find fame, fortune and the X Factor. Phew!
Wisdom gained: ‘I really believe that parents need to show a firm hand when it’s necessary. I also think that schools should be stricter and that teachers should have the power to discipline kids when they misbehave.’
We didn’t need to know that: ‘I’m not into casual sex any more, so when I’m not in a relationship my sex toy comes in very handy, thank you!’
IS IT JUST ME? by Miranda Hart (Hodder & Stoughton, £20)
She begins by writing; ‘My dear reader chum, a very hearty hello to you.’ She ends by writing: ‘Life, eh?’
The pages in between are like being trapped in a lift with a babbling madwoman.
Very soon, dear reader, chums find themselves suffocating in a queasy quagmire of affected kook.
For example: ‘Now it seems that this chapter endeth, which means it’s time for me to finish the jelly, bung on the Billy Joel and have a little dance.
'Who says we can’t be free like kids from time to time?’
How fascinating: ‘My fridge magnet is currently a small plastic broccoli floret.’
The real me: ‘There is no more interesting relationship than that between a woman and her dog.’
WHO I AM by Pete Townshend (HarperCollins £20)
A sad book about a sad man. Townshend may have been explosive on stage, but now he is a millpond of meek; just another rich guy who likes to sail his boat and hang out with his pretty girlfriend.
He seems to take a great deal of credit for The Who’s success and his dreary and laboriously explained high concept projects tell their own story of brooding introspection.
His account of being cautioned by police for using a credit card to access images of child sex abuse appear solid enough; Townshend had been obsessed with solving the mystery of abuse in his own childhood.
Incredible fact: In 1981 he went to the opening night of the musical Cats, where Bonnie Langford, the star, ‘gave me a knowing wink as she meowed and pranced up and down the aisle’.
Thanks for sharing: ‘We stayed in Paris for a couple of days. John Entwistle and his entourage were in town, so I threw a dinner for 20 people. Then we went to a club to drink and eat, where I vomited into a champagne bucket.’
MY TIME by Bradley Wiggins (Yellow Jersey Press, £20)
A gritty glimpse into what it takes to be the No. 1 cyclist in the world, written by a man who dreamed of wearing the maillot jaune (the Tour de France leader’s yellow jersey to you and me) since he was 12.
Amid a blizzard of sporting cliché, we discover that Wiggo was facing the abyss in 2010. His attempt to conquer the Tour de France had ended in humiliation, then the grandfather who had brought him up died. How he dragged himself back to win the Tour and Olympic glory is at the core of this book.
‘It was only in 2011 that I completely understood how much you need to work to get to the very top, what hard training is, and how much of a lifestyle change is involved.’
It is a life of extremes. He lives with wife Cath and their two young children in a house without sugar, bread, biscuits and fizzy drinks. He is always washing his hands, to avoid germs and illnesses that might disrupt his training. Dedicated to his sport, he gets ******* angry at the doping antics of others.
The Real Me: ‘At the end of the day, I’m a shy bloke looking forward to taking my son rugby training after the tour.’
Romance: ‘Cath has seen me though the good times, the bad times, the ups and the downs and the great times.’
We Didn’t Need To Know That: ‘But after that trip to the North-East, I got ill with diarrhoea for two days.’
ROD THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Rod Stewart (Century, £20)
A terrific book and a great read.
From humble beginnings in North London, Stewart became a much-married huge star.
He has lived a life, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, he has the luxury of hindsight and a kind of Rod-ish wisdom.
He can be puerile but is often hilarious.
It’s all about the blow-dry.
‘My hair announces my presence and my availability for work as effectively as the light on the top of a taxi cab.’
Romance is not dead: ‘In the eight years that I was with Rachel, I was entirely faithful to her.
'Very early on in the relationship, I told the Press: “I’ve put my last banana in the fruit bowl.” ’
UNBELIEVABLE by Jessica Ennis (Hodder & Stoughton, £20)
A rush job, and it shows. From a mixed-race family, Jess was weaned in Leeds on liquidised tripe and milk. She wore clothes from charity shops. She was bullied at school, some of it a bit racist, she still feels the wounds.
At athletics camp in 1996, coaches spotted something in her. She was ‘smitten’ with athletics, but the turning point came when she was 16 and ‘crashed out’ after drinking too much at a friend’s party. She threw up next day en route to a competition.
‘I had to choose between athletics and a normal, teenage, party-going lifestyle. It was the day I decided that the sacrifice was worth it.’ This leads her to the moment she is on the blocks at the 2012 Olympics, asking herself: ‘Will I capture the moment, or let it slip?’ Curiously passionless. It could be about a Dalek.
Wisdom gained: ‘You need to work and work, on the track and in the gym and up your own heartbreak hill.’
The real me: ‘I always believed. And when you do that, life can get unbelievable.’
MY ANIMALS AND OTHER FAMILY by Clare Balding (Viking, £20)
A jolly read from Balding, whose superb hosting of the Olympics and Paralympics has turbocharged her popularity.
This only deals with her life up until she’s 20, with chapters centred on a dog or a horse she has loved.
She is an outsider, she is sports mad, she dates boys, but she returns them ‘like library books’ and decides she’s been ‘looking in the wrong part of the library’.
Deftly does what an autobiography is supposed to do — increase our understanding and admiration for the subject.
Parents can be awful: ‘Do you love me more, now I’m thin?’ she asks her father, after losing weight.
‘Yes, I think I do,’ he replies.
CAMP DAVID by David Walliams (Michael Joseph, £18)
David dishes like no one else, but sometimes you rather wish he wouldn’t.
He confesses to suicidal self-loathing, to sex addiction, to wanting to be loved by everyone.
He notes that working with Matt Lucas can be difficult — I do wonder what Matt says about him?
Walliams has a curious need to appear vulnerable; perhaps he thinks this makes him more lovable?
He’s a nice writer, but there is a gloating undertow to his claims about the notches on his bedpost.
Even Rod Stewart doesn’t do that.
Thanks for Sharing: ‘She gradually removed her hands to reveal the most beautiful breasts I had ever seen.’
BETWEEN THE LINES by Victoria Pendleton (HarperSport, £20)
Pendleton grew to hate cycling, which makes this book a rather depressing read.
She is emotional, she is bitter, she sticks a pair of nail scissors into her arm when she is unhappy.
Elsewhere she obsesses about a perceived lack of support within Team GB, she writes screeds of complaining letters which remain unsent, she tries to retire in 2010 but is persuaded to stay on.
She gets her second gold, but she is still not happy.
After reading this, you wonder if she ever will be.
The real me: ‘I felt in need of some glitz.
'It made up for being shunned and shamed by a few angry cycling coaches.’
MY STORY by Cheryl Cole (HarperCollins, £20)
Oh, what a tiny, primped, glossy ball of Geordie aggression!
While our Cheryl glosses over any friction between Girls Aloud members, she writes a lot about fighting in her early life when things were hard; a brother was sent to prison, another taught her how to fight by punching cushions.
She takes the opportunity to demolish the two men in her life who have crossed her: ex-husband Ashley Cole and Simon Cowell.
Neither escapes lightly and Cheryl emerges as a humourless plotter determined to make it big.
Atta girl: ‘I knew for a fact I was going to make my living by performing.
'Nothing and nobody was going to stand in my way.’
IT'S ALL NEWS TO ME by Jeremy Vine (Simon & Shuster, £18.99)
Hilarious, self-deprecating and moving, this chronicles his 25 years at the BBC.
In the early radio days, he portrays himself as cocky, self-obsessed and over-ambitious.
Vine is so desperate to get the war story and make his name, he’s nearly killed driving through a potato field near Vukovar.
When he has a nosebleed later, he can’t stop looking at himself in the mirror.
He feels he is a real war reporter at last — he has shed blood.
A terrific read about obsessive youthful aspirations. Peter Mandelson once said of him: ‘You’re the only person in Britain who wants to be on television more than I do.’
Wisdom gained: ‘So we have landed on the first prayer of broadcasting: Lord, where there is no humility, may you grant humiliation.’
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