This book was recommended to me on several occasions, and proved a devil to track down. However, perseverance paid off with a truly terrible piece of work. Don seemed a genuinely nice guy who had a wonderful singing voice and was a tremendous acting foil in some well-loved comedies. Alas, he was no writer as "Sing Lofty" proves.
Where do you start? The third-person introduction? The fact that he doesn't even mention his birth name (Ronald Edwards) until page 98? The sudden and meaningless rants against modern society (the infamous "tight crotched morons")? The final 100 pages being the world's most boring list of professonal dates which might as well been copied straight from his desk diary? The grand total of three showbiz anecdotes, one of which appears twice? The repeated, unending praise for Rochdale Town Hall, one of the finest in the country? If there's one thing he was good at, it was the non-sequiturs. He could change direction like nobody on Earth: "I went back to give my marriage a second chance, but it didn't work out. About the same time, speed king Donald Campbell was killed in his Bluebird."
If there's one thing you can say in praise of Sing Lofty it's that the author is devastatingly honest. I implore you to go and find this book, for it is a true gem amongst a crowded field of smug, self-satisfied autobiogs, and for that it gets five stars.
