Entering the crowded market of the celeb autobiography, Sue Perkins has managed to bring a fresh approach to the genre with a witty and funny view of her life so far - making this autobiography a winner. How much is true or gussied up for a laugh is hard to say but at base there's the story of a girl from Croydon who manages to get to the top in a very indirect fashion. It's an engaging story that does involve cake – but not a lot.
When I began writing this book, I went home to see if my mum had kept some of my stuff. What I found was that she hadn't kept some of it. She had kept all of it - every bus ticket, postcard, school report - from the moment I was born to the moment I finally had the confidence to turn round and say 'Why is our house full of this shit?' Sadly, a recycling 'incident' destroyed the bulk of this archive. This has meant two things: firstly, Dear Reader, you will never get to see countless drawings of wizards, read a poem about corn on the cob, or marvel at the kilos of brown flowers I so lovingly pressed as a child. Secondly, it's left me with no choice but to actually write this thing myself. This, my first ever book, will answer questions such as 'Is Mary Berry real?', 'Is it true you wear a surgical truss?' and 'Is a non-spherically symmetric gravitational pull from outside the observable universe responsible for some of the observed motion of large objects such as galactic clusters in the universe?' Most of this book is true. I have, of course, amplified my more positive characteristics in an effort to make you like me. Thank you for reading.
Sue Perkins is perhaps best known for being one quarter of double act Mel and Sue, where she plays the part of Mel. Together, the pair have bounced, shouted and gurned their way through countless hours of television, most memorably Light Lunch and its later counterpart, the imaginatively titled Late Lunch. Over the years, Sue has worked on a wide range of solo projects, including documentaries on art, popular fiction and history. In 2008 she appeared on the BBC show Maestro, culminating in her conducting at the Last Night of the Proms. She has also collaborated with food-critic Giles Coren on the Supersizers series, where the duo power-ate their way through five centuries of lungs, livers and testicles whilst half-cut on sherry. In the last couple of years, Sue has travelled extensively throughout Asia, driving the Ho Chi Minh trail, exploring the length of the Mekong River and getting felt up by a Cambodian hermit. She is a regular contributor to Have I Got News For You, Just a Minute, QI and The News Quiz and has been crowned, officially, The World's Greatest Liar in a hard fought contest in Cumbria. Oh, and apparently she does some cake show on BBC1.
