Dedication

      To all my enemies,

       I will destroy you.

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Introduction

      One

      I grew up in a Glasgow. It’s a disturbing but…

      Two

      Primary school was great. On the first day I was…

      Three

      I know one shouldn’t dwell on the past, so I’ve…

      Four

      The school had a nice policy of trying to do…

      Five

      Lust is a big part of most men’s personality. They…

      Six

      The summer I left school I got a job as…

      Seven

      Shortly after being sacked from the civil service, I found…

      Eight

      Going to Sussex University was great. Yes, a lot of…

      Nine

      After I graduated, age 22, I got a job working…

      Ten

      I’d been going out with a girl since working in…

      Eleven

      Having been going full time on the comedy circuit for…

      Twelve

      For a wee while I was quite happy travelling around…

      Thirteen

      At the same time as appearing on the Live Floor…

      Fourteen

      Live Floor Show was given a network series, but the…

      Fifteen

      Shortly after landing the job writing for Jimmy Carr, a…

      Sixteen

      Mock the Week had become inexplicably popular, so I went…

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Copyright

      Back Ads

      About the Publisher

      INTRODUCTION

      I don’t think anyone can have written an autobiography without at some point thinking, ‘Why would anyone want to know this shit?’ I’ve always read them thinking, ‘I don’t want to know where Steve Tyler grew up! Just tell me how many groupies he fucked!’ I suppose I’ve just had to assume that anybody who buys this book has an interest in my life story, but I’ve covered myself by including long passages about all the groupies Steve Tyler has fucked.

      I’ve been careful not to get too nostalgic. It’s the most retrograde, reality-denying emotion. How long before you’ll be standing at a bus stop hearing someone moan, ‘Say what you like about Saddam, but that country’s gone to hell without him’? Saddam did at least make the trains run on time. It’s just that they were DeathTrains to DeathCamps. To be honest, they were often late but people were too scared to say anything.

      There’s a fair bit of swearing in this book. I wasn’t going to put in any at all but then I thought, ‘Fuck it, these readers are cunts.’ I know there’s an argument that swearing should only be used by a writer to underline a point that really demands it, or when strong emotions are in play. I think of this as a particularly English view, resting on the sad viewpoint that not much ever merits strong emotion or opinion. The whole debate is a bit pointless. I was in a hotel room recently and a show came on where Frank Skinner was talking about swearing on TV. I switched over and had a half-hearted wank. I’m one of about three people in the country directly affected, and I switched over. I would have happily watched Frank Skinner talk about anything else and I had a half-hearted wank over a presenter I know is a lesbian. For which I awarded myself double points.

      There’s a genuine BBC directive that says you can’t use ‘fucking’ as a verb but you can use it as an adjective. So now you have to say, ‘Do you know what’s fucking great? Nookie!’ Ian Wright has criticised the BBC for dumbing down. I agree with him, but there’d be more weight to his argument if he’d stayed with the BBC. I’m glad he escaped from the relentless intellectual slide to present Gladiators.

      This book isn’t entirely accurate. I have changed all the names and occasionally tweaked the order of events. I’ve also lied quite a lot. My favourite autobiography is Clive James’s brilliant Unreliable Memoirs. In the introduction he says that all the stuff that sounds true is made up and all the unbelievable bits are true. I’m saying that too, stealing it from him. I also stole his Chapter Four, for anyone who wonders why I went to sixth-form college in Australia. There are a few other instances of plagiarism; they’re mostly just the bits where I’m solving mysteries in Victorian London. Also, there are a couple of blatant untruths. The 1988 Scottish Cup Final was won by Celtic, rather than Dundee United, and I did not rape Tina Turner.

      Sadly, there are parts of my life that haven’t made it into the book. In the Seventies I was involved in a top-secret project. I’m not really allowed to talk about it, but it was big. That’s all I can tell you about Operation C. I. AIDS. I went to some CIA seminars to begin with but I can’t remember much about them. All I know is that anytime I hear any of John Lennon’s solo stuff I go out and buy a harpoon. I still have the flask of Michael Jackson’s DNA I stole for Operation Timberlake. His DNA wasn’t hard to get. I dressed up as a schoolboy and hid the flask in my ass. I was also part of the plot to kill Castro, but it was impossible to get near him. I did manage to become his masseur, but even that he makes you do through a catflap with a snooker rest.

      Being a special operative was a great job. How many people can say they got to meet all three Paul McCartneys? A lot of people wanted to strangle him after the Frog Chorus, but I was the one who actually got to do it. The CIA recruited me in an operation where they got prostitutes to spike people with acid and find out their secrets. They really had me over a barrel once they knew how much I liked to fuck prostitutes on acid.

      There are quite a few drug-abuse stories coming up but I do urge you all to use drugs with caution. For example, never take cocaine before a group-therapy session. It’s really hard to interrupt a discussion on incest with a great idea for a song. Also, never take opium suppositories. I’ve never been in a situation where I thought ‘You know what would make this better? Hallucinating out of my arsehole.’

      Another part of my life I’ve not been able to talk about is when I was spiritual adviser to the England football team. I had to leave because I just couldn’t handle their attitude to women. You’ve got to worry when the movie on the team bus is The Accused. But you had to admire the simplicity of Sven’s team talks. He’d simply stand in the dressing room and say, ‘There are women out there.’ The team wouldn’t even leave by the door. They’d eat their way out onto the pitch through the dressing-room walls. Then for a while I ran an art project getting sex criminals and serial killers to send their ideas to television companies. It was always something they’d already thought of.

      It’s interesting for me to see the things people choose to get offended about and the things they let slide. Earlier this year I had to quit my Daily Record column over a moral disagreement. We disagreed over whether it was OK to make jokes about a dead child molester. It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of Michael Jackson – I was a big fan when I was 8. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was his ‘type’. For his London concerts Michael Jackson advertised for children in wheelchairs