I’ll start by stating the obvious – something that we have known for decades: Gyles Brandreth is clever, witty and entertaining. No doubt about that.
It was therefore with eager anticipation that I bought this autobiography. I was looking forward to glimpsing the man behind the theatrical mask. What deep experiences and soul-searching had produced a person of such seeming self-confidence? What aspects of early life had led by chance to his celebrity? Was he a shy boy who found himself stage-front and discovered he could do it? Was he motivated by insecurity, empathy, love, regret, passion, altruism… ?
The answer is: none of the above. It really does seem that, with Gyles, what you see is what you get…. a talented, supremely confident, self-absorbed, smiley person who is motivated chiefly by his own instincts and desires.
Of course, within the genre this was a “professional” autobiography and so the endless name-dropping and all-about-me anecdotes can be largely forgiven. I just wish that this had been made clear. Halfway through, I thought I would choke on yet another famous person who just happened to come across Gyles’ path. I am afraid not one of my old school friends, university chums, next-door neighbours, chance encounters or teachers were in any sense celebrities. It seems that Gyles never met or spoke to anyone who didn’t have a Wikipedia entry, or indeed a mention in Debretts. His passage through childhood and youth was largely dictated by parents who lived lives of constant stress and debt in order to place him on a path of privilege.
I have to confess to a bit of skim-reading. I guess all autobiographies are a bit self-indulgent – but this one takes the biscuit. There was a bit of soul-searching around mother and father, but it seems that the insight was a bit of an afterthought.
I will continue to tune in to Gyles – well no choice, he is rarely off the TV and radio – but I think that from now on I will be a bit more irritated than usual by his verbal effusions. I feel a bit disillusioned. Perhaps he could write another, more personal, autobiography in which he moves on from splashing around in the shallow end and treats us to the depth that must surely be there.
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