Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003)

Recounting 5 years from the publication of his memoirs, this set of diary extracts is a curious book. Its only part diary, really. Its constructed around diary entries but is a mix of diary entries, stories about celebrity friends, acquaintances or long dead comics, expositions on comedy, punctuated by gags which aren't really my type of humour. There is no doubt that Monkhouse was an intelligent and confident man - his memory for gags and ability to react off the cuff, is quite something.

This book is at its best I think when he stops reeling off gags and just talks about things. Although his expositions on comedy grew tiresome to me, his stories/anecdotes about
people - occasionally where names are changed but more often, not - were rather scandalous and fruity; refreshingly entertaining. Or just revealing interviews he had with people like Dick Emery and Les Dawson. Maybe I just like seeing how people really are behind their celeb facade. One gets the idea from the book that he did work extraordinarily hard - when not on tv he seems to have been doing many many live dates - whether in clubs or for corporate functions. He doesn't seem the type to have sat on his bum between tv shows. That said, when he did go on holiday it was either to Barbados, where he eventually had a house, or often to America and these trips are often described too.

There are many reminiscences of old performances - dying a death in front of various audiences, etc, which serve to illustrate how hard a job it is, while many of his holiday diary entries seem to be either highlighting the nature of life in Barbados, or a steady list of things he did on his hols in America - mainly shopping and eating in restaurants, in between touristy sight seeing; often with the most detail reserved for the food eaten at various restaurants. He and his wife clearly liked their food. The holiday entries did tend to blur eventually - "arrived in suite at posh hotel with great views...went here, went there, ate here ate there..." the exception being a hilarious story of being caught in the rain in Vancouver.

I didn't really get a sense of too much "up close and personal", despite it being a diary - it really was used as more of a device to trigger stories, sometimes loosely linked to that particular day, sometimes not. While the personal entries were mainly restricted to holidays or parties or events he worked at. That said, cant blame someone who spent so long in the public eye from wanting to keep something back.

As said, this was a follow up to his memoirs published when he was 65, and the book ends shortly after his 70th birthday party with him listing off all the work that has been put in his diary for him to do over the following few months and how he was pleased to still be busy and working. It ends with a rather touching sentence: "is 75 too soon to write another set of memoirs?". Touching because he wasn't to know that was was destined to die 5 years later after suffering prostate cancer.

While the inserting of too many gags were eventually wearing, I do now want to seek out a copy of his memoirs - he can tell a good story and while he was never a favourite of mine when alive, he was an interesting guy who clearly had a long and far more varied career than I realised. And just maybe there's a bit more of himself in that book. But I'm guessing...not too much. Either way, I imagine it will be an entertaining read.… (mais)