Jesters Given to Spooking Sycophants,

Christmas was a long time ago (and it’s nearly back again). That was when I received a copy of Peter Kay’s autobiography, The Sound of Laughter. I could have been snobbish and left it to gather dust but I read it. I also received two copies of The Naming of the Dead, one in the Rebus series created by Ian Rankin, I plan to read at least one of them, no one has taken the other from me yet.

I used to be a big fan of Peter Kay through Phoenix Nights but the more I saw of him, through recorded stand-up performances shown on television and also on his other comedies, the more tired I became of the jokes. However, this autobiography has rejuvenated my appreciation of Peter Kay’s talents.

Peter recounts his memories of school right through to when he began to become famous by winning some award. He talks about his time at school with the nuns, his forays into higher and further education and his many, many part-time jobs – there’s some comedy gold in all the scrapes that he got into.

The book is not written professionally, it wouldn’t be appropriate. It’s written how Peter would deliver it verbally and because Peter’s voice is already in the heads of the readers, it works. I could imagine him narrating the stories and feelings, with his tones, moods and pace, perfectly. Some of the incidents had me laughing out loud, which is unusual for a book (I can’t remember doing so since I read Confederacy of Dunces ages ago. It’s against the etiquette of reading.). I thought that the catastrophes at work and experiences on stage that were described had to be true because it would be impossible to fabricate any memories quite like these but then I noted that nothing like these ever happened to me in my jobs. There was nearly a fire in the lab last week but that was not funny. There was the time that I got told off for bring too many cups of water to a meeting but that too was not funny and was merely symptomatic of my attitude problems. There was an afternoon when I was ordered to sort a bag of assorted elastic bands into piles of like sized ones but again there was no comic material there. In any case, I laughed whilst reading the book and the afterthoughts were self-induced so Peter Kay can’t really be at fault.

The autobiography does feel incomplete, Peter didn’t really say much about his family and chronologically, the book ends before he tours with The Shirehorses, creates That Peter Kay Thing and conquers the world. I assume Peter will one day write another autobiography, on the basis of this one, it’ll be worth reading. The Sound of Laughter was quick, easy to read and was funny, not much more could be expected from an autobiography from a comedian.