Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights (Paperback)

So declares Burt Ward (Robin from the legendary 60s TV series "Batman") at the beginning of his racy autobiography, "Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights." He's not exaggerating, either. The naughty stuff starts burning up the pages even before we hit Chapter One, and continues to do so throughout this hilarious, dirt-dishing show-biz expose.

Ward's memoirs read like a pornographic, hallucinogenic edition of the National Enquirer: containing all the celebrities, scandals and hyperbole one would expect from a tabloid, but with an additional explicitness and heightened sense of reality that recall the most lurid of paperback erotica. Holy leotarded lechery, Batman!

Kinky young fans in bat-costume; threesomes, foursomes and eightsomes; French, Samoan, American and Swamp (!) varieties - "My Life in Tights" presents a veritable catalogue of sexual permutations and combinations, as experienced by the author and his co-star, the insatiable Adam West (Batman). Nothing can prepare the reader for Ward's outlandishly purple prose - I mean, the guy's kinky way with words imbues even the most mundane descriptive sequence with other connotations...

Thankfully, however, Ward's eagerness to share every gory bedroom detail with us is counterbalanced by his irreverent humour, his highly developed sense of the absurd. Between passages that would make Jackie Collins blush, we get moments of unsurpassed hilarity.

And the source of this merriment is, almost invariably, the irrepressible Adam West. Portrayed as a boozing, egocentric womaniser, West couldn't have differed more from his stuffy small-screen alter-ego. His unique peccadilloes and unfailing ability to attract trouble (usually of the female variety) furnish the book with its funniest moments, recounted with affectionate relish by the ex-Boy Wonder. Take West's close encounter of the parasitic kind with a crazed red-head, for example:

"Into his mouth snaked that long, quivering tongue, not unlike what the creature did to the astronaut in Alien... This monster was like a 150-pound tick embedded in his face. During the ruckus, I caught glimpses of Adam's face covered with the drool and slobber of her wet kisses..." YOWZAH!

Although Burt Ward's brain often seems to be located in his (supposedly enormous) nether-regions, his book is not solely concerned with matters of the flesh. "Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights" also provides some valuable cultural insights, taking us behind the scenes of a super-successful TV series and beyond, into the mindset of the viewing generation it so affected, into the shadowy realm where life and art intersect...

"Truth is stranger than fiction, and this is the truth. Adam West has the unique ability to penetrate an audience's thoughts on a subconscious level... millions of women and men were affected around the world. His performance played subtle tricks on the unsuspecting minds of an unsuspecting audience..."

Tricks from which some of us will never recover...

He does tell us that he got laid a lot. Not as much detail is spent discussing the un-named compainons though as tales as to how large his organ is, and how many orgasms he was able to bring them to on a regular basis.

Funny thing about the book. He never discusses any friends. Upon reading the book it is apparent as to why. It is hard to imagine him having any.