Lahr (Automatic Vaudeville, 1984, etc.), in British tonalities never learned from his father, offers an overwrought backstage bio of a comedian largely unappreciated this side of the Pond. Self-proclaimed mega-star Dame Edna Everage (My Gorgeous Life, 1991) is a confidante of royals and a hobnobber with international glitterati. Surely, there's nothing like this Dame, with her contempt for her fans and the ``paupers'' in the balcony. (She skewers her ``possums'' lovingly, she says). The ineffable dominatrix from Melbourne is, of course, a pantomime lady—that favorite of the otherwise explicable British, a comic in drag. The Çminence grise inhabiting Edna's pantyhose is one Barry Humphries, a randy comic from Down Under. Humphries, a complex, self-centered, and often hostile man (it's said lovingly, possums), is a music- hall artiste of multiple personalities, including Edna's opening act, Sir Les Patterson, also from Australia and a souse with a stupendous appendage. (In ``the area of phallic fun, Sir Les holds his own,'' Lahr notes with his British humor, but he's ``not everybody's cup of pee.'' Be warned.) Undeniably, Humphries has a quick and unique wit that can steer the Everage faux gentility through jokes about leprosy and her late husband's prostate. But Lahr's sappy adulation veers toward parody itself. The ``excesses of Humphries' temperament,'' he gushes, ``are forgotten in the face of the abundance of his talent,'' even as his subject repeatedly gives him the brushoff. Humphries ``strides past me,'' Lahr notes. ``After another few minutes it's clear that I will not be summoned.'' The feckless author is happy, though. He just wants ``to stop time and to chronicle a moment in the prime of a great clown's life.'' ``Barry Humphries is among us, and he is the goods,'' insists Lahr. It remains to be seen if these goods will sell in these former colonies. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-13456-1
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
