So Me - Hardcover

Graham-norton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340895225 ISBN 13: 9780340895221

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004

Synopsis

Hugely entertaining and refreshingly honest, SO ME is the memoir everybody has been waiting for. Graham Norton, whose impish charm and quick wit has earned him a place in our hearts, looks back at his life so far, a personal journey that begins in a remote village in Ireland forty years ago. Packed with anecdotes about his time at Cork University before dropping out and joining a commune of hippies in San Francisco, about his disastrous attempts at becoming a serious actor and about the rise of his comedy career in London, this is a hilarious, insightful and at times moving account of a very colourful life.

As Norton puts it himself, SO ME is "a real romp through a journey from living in a cockroach-infested council flat in Hackney to buying Claudia Schiffer's townhouse in Manhattan, from my mother dragging me to school to me dragging her to Sharon Stone's house for New Year's brunch".

Containing Graham Norton's trademark stamp of surreal humour and wry observation, SO ME is a treat for all of the presenter's millions of fans.

About this title

Review

Like a lot of autobiographies, So Me is more interesting and insightful on the period of struggle before Graham Norton became famous than on a life which has become a constant round of professional encounters with celebrities. He is funny on his unsuccessful career as an actor and rather touching on the friendships that date back to the years he spent as a waiter. Under a surface of camp glibness, he is surprisingly evocative about the London of the 1980s--certain key locations of his life such as the restaurant where he worked or the slum high-rise where he lived are entirely present here.

He is honest about his flaws and moving about friends who taught him to be better--for example, a commune where he lived for a year in San Francisco gets a tribute. His later life--his cult success as a comedian and his discovery that what he really was is a chat-show host--is recorded with occasional insight. He is attractively unapologetic about his taste for smut; this is who he is and what he does, and we can take it or leave it.--Roz Kaveney

Review

A hugely engaging account of his life that is written with the same breezy bravura that he exhibits on telly ... There are points in the book when I found myself laughing out loud, and others when I was unusually moved ... Celebrity memoirs are rarely as genuine or as generously candid (Herald)

A frank, funny and sometimes tortured autobiography (Andrew Billen, The Times)

Frank and funny (Mirror)

Honest and entertaining ... he uses his quick wit and humour to amuse the reader from start to finish (The Sun)

A jaunty romp with oodles of humour (Hot Stars (OK))

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0340895225
• ISBN 13: 9780340895221
• Binding: Hardcover