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My Favourite People & Me: 1978-1988: 1978-1988
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Alan Davies was always a hoarder. Pages from Smash Hits, rolled up gig posters, Cup Final ticket stubs, Woody Allen paperbacks, NME covers and Blondie calendars filled boxes once used to ferry shopping home from supermarkets (back when supermarkets would leave boxes out for the ferrying of shopping). Not much that came down from Alan's bedroom wall made it into the bin, never mind the uninvented bin-liner.
Growing up is not easy. So many decisions: Who to revere, Sheene or McEnroe? Who to imitate, Starsky or Hutch? Who to dislike overnight in an effort to show maturity, Thatcher or Scargill? How to decide which pin-ups to unpin when a batch of Animal Rights leaflets or a satirical poster of Ronald Reagan demand wallspace?
The Impressionable Age of a young man lasts around a decade and the idols and icons of that period can reveal much of the time and of the impressed subject.
Nostalgic, warm and laugh-out-loud funny My Favourite People and Me 1978-1988 is an affectionate trip through a suburban childhood in Essex and an eighties education in Kent. As Alan says, 'an attempt to remember who and what I liked as a boy/youth/idiot and to work out why. There are also some pictures.'
About the Author
Alan Davies is a comedian, writer and actor, best known for starring in the hit BBC series Jonathan Creek and his regular appearances as a panellist on QI. My Favourite People and Me 1978 - 1988 is his first book.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book focuses on the years 1978-1988, and follows Alan Davies growing up from 12 to 22. It focuses on the people he identified with or found important, his heroes and icons as such. Each year is divided between several of these icons.
Firstly, let's say that the people who are mainly going to like this book are those who are fans of Alan Davies, as I think is often the way with autobiographical works. Although, he does give information on the people he is writing about, almost all of it is in the context of why they were important to him and the impact they had on his life. And the information given on his various favourite people does vary, with some we get a very good overview and some interesting facts about them and with others their section is almost totally lost in reminiscences about his own life, which can sometimes seem to have little to do with the selected person.
But if you do like Alan Davies then this book is a wonderful insight into his early years. It comes across very poignantly that for a great deal of his younger years he felt very lost and out of place but without it being a "woe is me" account like we now get from a number of celebrities. This isn't a blood and guts account, more a gentle insight into the parts of himself he doesn't mind sharing (and I definitely got a sense from this book that he is a private person). None of it is over-done or written in a way that forces the reader to feel pity. Some of the book can be hard to follow as he can jump about in time a bit, which makes sense with the way he writes his memories, but can create an odd moment of "where am I" confusion. There is also a definite sense of personal growth in the book and it ends when he is 22 because this is when he starts to feel more confident and finds his feet along with his career path and so no longer needs to find heroes for himself to follow.
All in all I would recommend this book but with the warning that it really is meant for Alan Davies fans and isn't a way to find out more about the people he has selected. Also, the humour in the book is rarely of the laugh out loud variety, except in a few instances, instead being more of the wry smile kind.
Firstly, let's say that the people who are mainly going to like this book are those who are fans of Alan Davies, as I think is often the way with autobiographical works. Although, he does give information on the people he is writing about, almost all of it is in the context of why they were important to him and the impact they had on his life. And the information given on his various favourite people does vary, with some we get a very good overview and some interesting facts about them and with others their section is almost totally lost in reminiscences about his own life, which can sometimes seem to have little to do with the selected person.
But if you do like Alan Davies then this book is a wonderful insight into his early years. It comes across very poignantly that for a great deal of his younger years he felt very lost and out of place but without it being a "woe is me" account like we now get from a number of celebrities. This isn't a blood and guts account, more a gentle insight into the parts of himself he doesn't mind sharing (and I definitely got a sense from this book that he is a private person). None of it is over-done or written in a way that forces the reader to feel pity. Some of the book can be hard to follow as he can jump about in time a bit, which makes sense with the way he writes his memories, but can create an odd moment of "where am I" confusion. There is also a definite sense of personal growth in the book and it ends when he is 22 because this is when he starts to feel more confident and finds his feet along with his career path and so no longer needs to find heroes for himself to follow.
All in all I would recommend this book but with the warning that it really is meant for Alan Davies fans and isn't a way to find out more about the people he has selected. Also, the humour in the book is rarely of the laugh out loud variety, except in a few instances, instead being more of the wry smile kind.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Although born at the very end of the '70s, Alan Davies' 'My Favourite People & Me' still struck a chord with me. I remember many of the people he mentions, even though by '88, when the book concludes, I was only 10. This goes a long way to show, I think, how influential some of these individuals were at the time and why Alan found them so influential to him.
You get a real sense that this a personal journey for Davies, a man who is happy to share his reminiscence with the reader, but who is ultimately a very private person. This is most apparent when Davies makes reference to his mother, who died of leukaemia when he was just 6 years old. Although it is clear this had a profound effect on him, as would be expected, there is no spilling over of emotions, no 'woe is me' monologue about the unfairness of it all. That's not to say this is a bad thing - too often these days 'celebrities' (used in the loosest of terms for many of those who have released biographies in the last few years) feel the need to pour out their hearts to anyone who is willing to listen. So Davies' occasional mentions of his mother in the context of him growing up, are enough to make you understand and appreciae how much he missed, and still misses, her. It is the NOT mentioning her at every opportunity that makes it more impactful when he does - the realisation that those times when he does are clearly the times when he wishes she were still alive to share those moments with.
Ultimately though this book is the chance for Davies to remember, sometimes with fondness, often with frustration, his up-bringing and the people who had the greatest influence on him as he was growing up and discovering who and what he wanted to be.
You get a real sense that this a personal journey for Davies, a man who is happy to share his reminiscence with the reader, but who is ultimately a very private person. This is most apparent when Davies makes reference to his mother, who died of leukaemia when he was just 6 years old. Although it is clear this had a profound effect on him, as would be expected, there is no spilling over of emotions, no 'woe is me' monologue about the unfairness of it all. That's not to say this is a bad thing - too often these days 'celebrities' (used in the loosest of terms for many of those who have released biographies in the last few years) feel the need to pour out their hearts to anyone who is willing to listen. So Davies' occasional mentions of his mother in the context of him growing up, are enough to make you understand and appreciae how much he missed, and still misses, her. It is the NOT mentioning her at every opportunity that makes it more impactful when he does - the realisation that those times when he does are clearly the times when he wishes she were still alive to share those moments with.
Ultimately though this book is the chance for Davies to remember, sometimes with fondness, often with frustration, his up-bringing and the people who had the greatest influence on him as he was growing up and discovering who and what he wanted to be.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I love Alan Davies, ever since he first started doing stand up I have been following his work and finding him funny ever since. His move into drama also shows that he can be tender and dark and has the gift of playing particularly likeable yet fairly complex people. His recent series on television about his influences when he was growing up were either based on this book, or this book was based on those instances. For this reason, having seen the programme first, I felt that a lot of this was old ground, and hadn't been particularly enriched by being in book format. Alan's passion for his subjects comes over, to my mind, much better on the small screen, and his warmth and humour really shine. Here the chapters were rather patchy and I found myself enjoying some way more than others.
I think one of the weaknesses here is that if you don't really have much idea of who these people are, it doesn't matter how interesting Alan finds them, if there isn't enough material to engage you, you are lost. The chapters that worked best for me were the ones about people i was already interested in or knew quite a bit about, or the ones where the person is used as a springboard for Alan to talk more about his own life, such as the chapter on his grandmother for example. The chapters that lost me entirely were the ones about football or other sporting heroes, about whom I wasn't interested in the slightest and didn't want to know about in the first place.
As such this was rather a hit and miss affair. Bits of it I loved, bits of it bored me to tears. None of this was down to Alan himself, but my love for Harry Redknapp for example is and always will remain minimal. I just am not that interested.
I think one of the weaknesses here is that if you don't really have much idea of who these people are, it doesn't matter how interesting Alan finds them, if there isn't enough material to engage you, you are lost. The chapters that worked best for me were the ones about people i was already interested in or knew quite a bit about, or the ones where the person is used as a springboard for Alan to talk more about his own life, such as the chapter on his grandmother for example. The chapters that lost me entirely were the ones about football or other sporting heroes, about whom I wasn't interested in the slightest and didn't want to know about in the first place.
As such this was rather a hit and miss affair. Bits of it I loved, bits of it bored me to tears. None of this was down to Alan himself, but my love for Harry Redknapp for example is and always will remain minimal. I just am not that interested.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
good service
Treated myself to this book as the price was good. Arrived very quickly and in good condition, well wrapped.
Published on 22 Jan 2010 by J. Smith
Alan Davies - My Favourite People and Me
Brilliant. Love him! A great throwback to my years growing up between 1977 and 1987. Full of wit and humour which is only to be expected of Alan (but then I do have a crush on... Read more
Published on 26 Nov 2009 by Ms. M. Wilton
Only quite interesting
Perhaps it's because he is alongside some very sharp witted people but on BBC TV's QI I usually find resident panellist Alan Davies's contributions to be irritating rather than... Read more
Published on 16 Oct 2009 by Bantam Dave
A really good book
This book is funny, sad and intelligent. Buy it. He does not have beautiful hand writing and he has managed to do well academically, so he is a hero for us scribblers and people... Read more
Published on 11 Oct 2009 by Mr. Aj Baugh
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