Paperback Writer

www.paulcoia.com

I have a story I want to share with you and when I tell it, you will probably ring around all your friends to pass it on. It could well change your life forever, allowing you to be the star story teller at your next dinner party. So, are you ready for this? Sure? Have I built up the tension enough?

When I was seven years old I ran down our path at home. I tripped and fell, causing a stone to embed itself in my knee. That’s why, to this day, I still have a scar there.

Now, undoubtedly you are feeling very lucky to be told this wonderful anecdote for free because I just know you would be willing to pay twenty pounds or more to read that side splitting tale in a book. Wouldn’t you? You seem to have gone very quiet.

I suspect I know the answer, yet we all contribute to the millions each year spent on newly published autobiographies filled with stories like this one that are about as interesting as growing cactus and as funny as malnutrition. They’re mainly written by celebrities with the allure of a used hanky in a literary style that would trail behind a No Smoking sign.

As it was my wife’s birthday this week I wanted to get her a book. She’s just finished reading her latest bedside read, a Mills and Boon type morality tale called Slightly Pissed And Never Been Kissed or something, so I spent an hour this morning in a book shop. When I asked for a recommendation, the assistant must have taken one look at me and thought I’d only just finished learning my alphabet. To help ease my way in to grown up reading with some simple words, he took me to the autobiography section which was full of new celebrity books for Christmas, and he recommended two detailing the lives of judges from Strictly Come Dancing.

Dear God! I’m all for letting minorities like reality TV show judges have equal opportunities, but when they are bitchy male ex dancers who desperately want to be famous and slag each other off constantly about their nose jobs, then I’m with their coke pusher - I draw the line. By all means let’s have a Telethon for these poor unfortunates and build a home where they can be shut away in comfort, but please keep them out my life - and my library.

I looked along the shelf and found sad autobiographies from reality show contestants, politicians, captains of industry, sportsmen, and other non entities who all, obviously, believe we want to read about their childhood tree house, eccentric aunties, school japes and favourite foods. Some can’t even be bothered to write the books themselves and I suspect someone must have told Jordan that “autobiography” just means written in your car by someone else.

There were some sad memoirs there on the shelf, including one from a daughter of Charlie Chaplin who felt she had never been properly recognised or acknowledged while she lived in the shadow of his fame, but at least she had a full life to look back on and seethe about. Some of these new books are by kids who have made one movie and are younger than my shoes.

And what about the thugs? Without exaggeration there must have been a dozen books written by convicted murderers, hit men and fraudsters all with titles like Killing Time, Dead Happy and Gang Bang. It was catching and I’m almost sure the shop’s security camera above this shelf had a sign saying What You Looking At? The books are all full of gory detailed descriptions about murderous attacks and gang wars and you are left in no doubt whatsoever about the amount of threatening, stabbing, slashing, suffocating, shooting, strangling, kicking and poisoning these ex cons have inflicted on their agent to get a deal.

The thugs, and their weapons, administered their own form of plastic surgery and most celebrity biogs now seem incomplete without a chapter on nose jobs or tucks and stitches. The old shocker of exposing a previously unknown love child has been replaced by admissions of facelifts and filler on page after page. Sharon Osborne updates her autobiography each year to detail a new operation while, in his new autobiography, Cliff Richard has written on why he gave up on Botox. I think it was turning him gay.

By the way did you know the association that looks after the interests of plastic surgeons is called the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, or Baaps for short? If you’re not British the humour in this will escape you. Baps are British slang for, well….. oh never mind.

There’s also a new development appearing in the autobiography section now where the pets of the famous write about their lives. We’re supposed to get the joke, buy this stuff, and laugh along as we open our Christmas present to find an ex politician ghost writing his pet’s memoirs. I wasn’t around but I’m pretty sure the hardback charts weren’t bothered after The Wizard of Oz with “Toto. My Life As A Munchkin’s Plaything.”

So from my one hour research this week, it seems to me that we need more interesting celebrities writing more interesting books in a more interesting style and, in an effort to be more interesting on my blog, I’ll end with another true story. I was once arrested and charged at a police station with assault. How come?

Well, of course, you’ll have to wait for my autobiography to find out.