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More Fool Me by Stephen Fry (first published in 2014 by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Books)
Disclaimer: I love Stephen Fry. Seriously, he’s one of my all-time favourite famous people. He’s funny, witty, a bit strange, a little dark and just the right amount of silly. So, when I got the chance to review his third and latest autobiography, I jumped at the chance.
Before this book, I’d only ever read Moab Is My Washpot, his first autobiography which was published in 1997. It felt a bit odd to get such a personal look into Fry’s personal life - sort of like walking in on someone getting dressed. But it was a wonderfully honest piece of writing that laid bare the celebrity the world had come to know and love.
More Fool Me, however, falls just short of this.
While you still get to take a peek into Mr Fry’s private life, it feels as if the book was written purely for the sake of writing another memoir.
The first chunk of the book reflects on Fry’s two previous memoirs, which somehow hurriedly tries to catch up the reader to the wonderful life Stephen Fry has lived.
I was rather dreading writing this review and I couldn’t figure out why. Then, I realised I actually hated reading it. And, as a fan, that’s a rather difficult thing to admit.
It felt as if Stephen was really just telling these stories and filling up the end of the book with random diary entries from the ‘90s. It felt too easy, like a throw-away. Which is rather disappointing to a reader (yes, I mean me) who normally thinks the sun shines out of the author’s arse.
Stephen talks of his rather perilous 15-year cocaine habit (which seems to take up far too many pages, if you ask me); and the various places he snorted this at (which range from Buckingham Palace to the Daily Telegraph’s offices); and then goes on to talk about modern art in a rather pretentious way.
And just when you think the cloud of bullshit is about to clear and the real Stephen, the one who wrote the lovely Moab and who has made fantastic documentaries about his bipolar disorder, is about to come through, he fails.
I felt disappointed with this book. Not just because I love Stephen and all his work, but because it didn’t feel like it was the real Stephen.
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