After the terror of reading Dan Brown’s Inferno I’ve plumped for something a little less shit. I’ve plumped for the collected writings about himself (but not an autobiography) of the radio journalist Richard Bacon, A Series of Unrelated Events. A book is perhaps the perfect format for me to interact with Bacon (Richard Bacon – not the pork product, a sandwich is the best format for me to interact with the pork kind of bacon) because I can find him a little annoying and self-satisfied. This is more when he is hosting something on TV than presenting a radio show.
This is clearly my fault on some shallow level as I would happily say, I wouldn’t – and didn’t – use the verb concede, that Bacon (Richard Bacon – not the pork product) is clearly a witty, eloquent, interesting and charming man. And this comes across in the book, much as I imagine that Chris Moyles is a cunt comes across in his books.
I’ve only read a few chapters. He got the Coke/Blue Peter tale right out of the fucking way. You can say what you want about learning about the early years of a famous person’s life when they write some format of memoir but I’m all for not hearing about when they went to school. BOOM: just jump straight to taking Class A drugs when you worked for the BBC’s flagship children’s TV show.
Thus far the book is swinging between sardonic retelling of events in his media career and waxing lyrical about different issues. I just read a chapter about him getting stitched up by a psychic on an ITV2 show and it entails Bacon (the…etc) having a go at his dead grandmother and asking why dead people are always predicting the future, which is a ruddy hilarious observation in the format of a question.