Adventures in reading, running and working from home

I won Helen Lederer’s memoir from NetGalley and the Nicki Chapman is another book read for my “Read the Darn Hardback” challenge, the last one for the moment where I acquired the hardback after the paperback had come out. The lovely Annabookbel kindly sent it to me after I commented on her review of it on her blog. I have actually now read and reviewed three of the eighteen print books I acquired in January this year!

Helen Lederer “Not That I’m Bitter: A Truly, Madly, Funny Memoir”

(03 Feb 2026, NetGalley)

In my head, I felt genuinely curious. in practice I’d forgotten how to behave.

A very brave and honest book: I will admit that at times Lederer comes over a little bitter, but then she has every right to be, as she got caught time-wise between the success of French & Saunders and Victoria Wood and others, who were then the only funny women allowed, and the crop of slightly younger female comedians who also found success. Lederer seems to have struggled and all through her career needed to scrape together work, find a new agent, etc. However, as highlighted in the quote at the top, she also manages to self-sabotage over and over again, behaving frankly terribly, including asking people why they haven’t given her jobs, doing things poorly, and in the example above, asking her agent’s other clients what they thought of her agent at an event the agent was also attending. It’s great to be outspoken and honest and it’s interesting to see how women comedians were expected to be as sexually active and free and easy as the men (though of course then more damaged by it), but there is a deep vein of actively ruining her chances which is very painful to read about.

The book is funny and gives lots of great gossip about the British comedy world, but it is a hard read as you’re constantly reading about abusive relationships (especially early on when she was taken advantage of at drama school and beyond) and waiting for Lederer to undermine herself. It’s a real shame as she’s played some great parts and written some great material. I hope this book helped her to find some peace and catharsis.

Thank you to Mirror Books for accepting my request to read this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Not That I’m Bitter” was published on 10 April 2025.

Nicki Chapman – “So Tell Me What You Want: My Story of Making It in the Mad, Bad and Fab Pop Music Industry”

(07 January 2026, gift from Annabel)

I’d left the UK a few weeks earlier as a music executive. I’m going home the girl off the telly, and my life will never be the same again. (p. 267)

A breath of fresh air and positivity, although still with the odd cringey moment, this is the story of the woman who was so influential in the careers of bands such as Hear’say, the Spice Girls and Take That, but also worked with Bowie, Prince and all sorts of other artists, working in management and PR before moving into TV work with Popstars and Pop Idol.

We follow Chapman, writing with Sarah Thompson (and mentioning her on the title page and the acknowledgements) through her first steps in her career, taking a risk applying for a job with a record company and typing and making tea all the way up to co-running her own music PR agency and beyond. She’s loyal to her friends, careful in who she criticises, aware of the imbalances and misogyny going on, and most importantly she comes across as so kind and caring to the people she really does “look after”, trying to advise and protect them as well as promote them. There’s just the right amount of gossip but nothing prurient or unpleasant, and some very sweet stories about especially the Spice Girls.

The book is set out well, starting with the TV stuff then looping back, not too much childhood stuff but just enough (in Herne Bay, Kent!) and then what’s great is there are little mentions of style changes as we go through the years, charcoal sofas and the like, and Chapman’s outfits and where she gets them, which really root the narrative into its times. A really enjoyable and informative read, very readable and engaging.

Two more memoirs read which fall under my “Read the Darn Hardback” challenge, with no paperback available for “Words from the Hedge” and Dean Atta’s book being discounted at the Heath Bookshop when the paperback came out. “Words from the Hedge” was part of a bumper crop of 23 books acquired in May 2025 – out of those, I have now read and reviewed five and passed two along (one after using it to beef up a review I was writing). “Person Unlimited” was part of a six-book acquisition month in July 2025 and out of the five books I acquired to read then, this is the first one I’ve read and reviewed.

Richard Negus – “Words from the Hedge: A Hedgelayer’s View of the Countryside”

(14 May 2025, subscribed to from Unbound)

Negus is one of the few hedgelayers left in England, and together with his working partner, uses a variety of methods, from tractors to hand-tools, to perform a variety of processes to hedgerows in mainly the East of England. He’s lyrical about East Anglia and careful in his descriptions so the reader really understands what he’s doing. He goes into the history of enclosure and hedges, and, so, farming, and makes it plain how nothing is permanent and everything comes and goes. He’s not keen on full rewilding and rewetting, saying it cuts productivity and is only doable by rich landowners and organisations with money behind them, but shares case studies of farmers who have shaped their fields to be squarer, so easier to work, while leaving large margins by the hedges to promote habitats for wildlife. He also brings out the hypocrisy of the use of “ecological surveys” by developers et al. who employ people to not look at things properly in order to get their plans passed.

One point I really enjoyed was where he celebrated the use of dictation software on his phone when doing his own nature surveys as part of his hedge work, then shared the rubbish it came out with when he looked at the results – good to hear as I struggle with the incursion of automated transcription into my own work!

A central argument which made me uncomfortable, I’m afraid, even though he’s probably right, being in at the thick of it, is that personal and commercial shooting industry is what keeps most of the hedges and indeed the hedgelayers in business. I suppose this would be fair enough, but then he shares his own enjoyment of shooting birds (all the while describing his love for and relationship with (other) birds and his respect for the intelligence of rooks, etc., and also acknowledging the oddity, to give the most positive term I can, of this practice) – bird species that I love. I couldn’t really get past this to enjoy the rest of the book.

A shame, as it is full of detail and interest and a desire to explain to non-countrypeople how the countryside and countrypeople operate.

Dean Atta – “Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body”

(10 July 2025, The Heath Bookshop)

This isn’t a coming-of-age story. This isn’t a coming-out story. This isn’t a chronological story. This is a story of coming to terms with what I remember. Shining a light on the memories that make me the Black queer man I am today. (p. 5)

A more traditional full memoir but fractured and fragmented and organised in an unorthodox way. Under headings such as crown, voice, heart, he picks up details and moments from his life, in the first section taking us all the way through via the vehicle of his hair and the people who work on it, from his childhood barber where he learned how to not act gay and never considered gay men might be present, through his mother and friends creating his cornrows then helping with his dreads.

He’s brutally honest and there is quite a lot of fairly graphic detail, although it never seemed gratuitous. The description of his rape part way through the book makes both Atta and the reader think back over other encounters and wonder whether they were sexual assaults before he had the language or confidence to describe them as such. We’re relieved when he meets his life partner and settles with kindness as well as being present in his body through yoga and having talking therapy.

Atta’s family, both the Jamaican and Greek Cypriot sides, are described movingly and with deep love, and it’s an intimate and loving book, even if he doesn’t love himself very much at times.

Atta’s technical ability is shown by the fact that although we hop all over the place through his life, whenever he mentions something it looks like we should already know about, we do – the ordering is done meticulously, as is necessary in a book like this, but not always quite there.

They’re of different generations but they’re both fabulous actors and have produced excellent, readable memoirs. Both books also fall under my “Read the Darn Hardback” challenge, with Steadman’s paperback being out before I found the hardback in The Works and no information available on a paperback for Burke’s book. I bought Alison Steadman’s “Out of Character” at a huge discount and it was part of a bumper crop of 23 books acquired in May 2025 – out of those, I have now read and reviewed three and passed two along (one after using it to beef up a review I was writing). Kathy Burke’s “A Mind of My Own” only arrived in November 2025 and I’ve now read and reviewed two out of the nine acquired that month.

Alison Steadman – “Out of Character”

(09 May 2025, The Works)

Acknowledged as being written with Fiona Lindsay on the title page, this book has a great structure, starting with an initial musing on who the “real” Alison is before going into an early morning routine which is echoed by the return home at the end of the book. In the middle we get a fairly standard chronological narrative, taking us from her early years right through to the final Christmas special of Gavin & Stacey being commissioned.

Steadman is very erudite, interrogating her process of getting into the skin of an “other woman” who she’s playing – I didn’t realise how much she’d worked with Mike Leigh and she’s fascinating on the process of creating his characters and stories, but she’s also a keen birdwatcher and talks about that quite a bit, which is lovely. She’s also very open about worries and experiences in her work while remaining discreet about her private life, and is careful to thank people and credit them for help given (including her colleagues at the probation office she worked at before she went to drama school, who clubbed together to buy her textbooks).

Lots of photographs and really a lovely read.

Kathy Burke – “A Mind of My Own”

(26 November 2025, from Annabel)

Kathy Burke is another one who makes sure to thank those who have helped her and is careful about giving too many details of her private life. She also makes it clear that she didn’t work with a ghost writer (and she is a writer herself, after all), and finishes the book as she approaches the age of 40 rather than bringing it right up to date. While both women are working-class and grew up without much, Kathy’s story is much more traumatic, living with an alcoholic dad and raised by her older brothers and various kind neighbours after her mum died when she was 18 months old, with an option to go into a children’s home when one of her brothers leaves home and a sudden realisation at 16 that the people around her were also all poor. She doesn’t play it for sympathy in the slightest and is wry about how she did play on some things as a kid, but it’s all pretty grim and we really cheer for her when she finds acting and begins to succeed.

The chapters are mostly short and punchy, taking us through chronologically and deftly weaving people through it who come and go in her life as well as those who she befriends and keeps forever. She’s very honest about her learning over how to name people of global majority communities and with multiple heritages, taught by her sister-in-law, and you have to admire her for talking about stuff she could have left unsaid. I also love it when she says “I wasn’t interested in looking for further ways to not pay my fair share” when talking about her accountant and financial advisor. We leave Kathy having decided to abandon acting for directing for a while, only doing things that are her choice and on her terms: she appreciates she’s fortunate to be able to do this, and again, something I admire her for.

Another excellent read with a good selection of photographs!