Strictly For the Fans (Why Do I Say These Things? - Jonathan Ross)

Member Name: DavyMichelle

Product:	Why Do I Say These Things? - Jonathan Ross
Date:	22/07/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A Couple of Amusing Anecdotes, Bit of Biographical Info

Disadvantages: Really Drawn Out Jokes, Content Doesn't Match Blurb

Why Do I Say These Things? is a book by TV funnyman Jonathan Ross. It got it from the discount website Bananas for a couple of quid, but the usual retail price is close to £20 for the hardcover version! Amazon have it for about £10, which this book is just not worth in my opinion.

According to Ross, this book is not supposed to be an autobiography. He insists that he's not got round to writing one of those yet. Instead, this book is supposed to be a fun-filled journey through the weird and wonderful interactions he's had with celebrities over the years. Including all the foot-in-mouth comments he's made and completely inappropriate opinions he's offered at all the wrong times. I loved the sound of the concept, it's a shame that this book is nothing like it claims to be then really! Instead, it really is much more of an autibiography - which is not what I thought I was buying at all.

Jonathan mostly rambles his way through this book, with no real sense of purpose, direction or common sense. The way he frequently draws out tiny jokes really annoyed me in places, as he seemed to spoil the joke quite often by banging on about it. For example he says on one page quite near the beginning of the book "Never yet having smuggled drugs, I can only imagine how keenly having a condom filled with cocaine working it's way through your lower intestines must focus your attention. However now I think of it, surely they would have been smuggling drugs out of the country rather than into it. Perhaps they were lost or stupid drug mules. I added that qualifying 'yet' because you never know what the future might hold, and I don't want to make rash promises now that I might have trouble keeping later in life."

That little anecdote could have been so much more amusing had Jonathon not decided to explain the joke at the end like he did. I felt quite patronised as a reader, and frankly bored with the great lengths this guy went to throughout the book to explain nearly every little joke he cracked. Jonathan has so many funny little experiences to tell, but the way he's told them here just wasn't terribly amusing.

The focus on the book throughout is mainly about Jonathan's rise to fame. Starting off with a few childhood tales (some amusing, some frankly weird), and progressing to explain to us 'idiot readers' what fame feels like and how it came to be in Jonathan's grasp. For a book that reckons it isn't an autobiography, it sure reads a whole lot like one.

There were some places in here that did make me chuckle out loud, and those were the places that encouraged me to carry on with this book and see it through to the end. I also kept hoping that the 'juicy parts' would appear at some point in the latter half of the book, and that Jonathan had simply drawn out the start too much. Sadly I was to be disappointed, as I never did find an array of wonderful and witty celebrity mishap anecdotes. I was rewarded with the odd titbit here and there, but nothing particularly compelling, surprising or even terribly amusing I'm afraid.

If you're a big fan of Jonathan Ross then you might want to give this a go for a couple of quid. As far as autobiographies go, this is a disjointed but sometimes witty one. It's certainly not the book of funnies that it's been marketed to be though, and I would be seriously disappointed had I paid the full retail price for this.

Summary: Recommended For Fans Only