Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

The first book in 25 years from Jerry Seinfeld features his best work across five decades in comedy. Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub Catch a Rising Star as a 21-year-old student in autumn of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything.

Between them, Denise Scott and Judith Lucy have been doing stand-up comedy for over 60 years. Eavesdrop on their conversations about everything from sex to ageing to work and back to sex – actually, there’s a lot of sex. These conversations are based on material tried and tested at live shows so you get the best of their crapping on. Please note: contains strong language and adult content.

If it's navel-gazing you're after, you've come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street; collecting Romanian insults, or being taken round a Japanese parasite museum. There's a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party - lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs. These diaries remind you that you once really hated George W. Bush, and that not too long ago, Donald Trump was a harmless laughingstock, at least on French TV.

For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny. All About Me! charts Mel Brooks' meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts.

Could you be happier? When Hugh van Cuylenburg went to India on a teaching trip he met a joyful 10-year-old student who taught him lessons that changed his life. Since setting up The Resilience Project, Hugh has shared what he learned with over a million Australians through his show GEM, a series of comical anecdotes, moving stories and practical methods for leading a happier and more resilient life.

Nazeem Hussain is a grown man whose Mum won't let him go to Sri Lanka. At least, not without her by his side. But he's just had a kid, and he's started thinking ahead to the questions his son might ask him one day, like, 'why are we brown?' So Naz flies to Sri Lanka with the echoes of his Mum's protests in his ears. Naz tours Sri Lanka at a pivotal time for the country, politically and culturally. A new government is elected while Naz is in the air, so he lands in a strange atmosphere of confusion and change.

At the start of 2021 Richard Herring was diagnosed with testicular cancer. For a man whose output includes a stand-up tour titled Talking Cock and who regularly interrogates our attitudes towards masculinity, it was a diagnosis that came with additional layers of complexity. Mixing Rich's personal story alongside what defines masculinity and 'maleness' in society, Can I Have My Ball Back? is not your typical cancer memoir. Whether they're nuts, or bollocks, or gonads, or family jewels, Rich unpicks the tangle of emotions around his own testing times.

When the legendary comedian Barry Cryer died in January 2022, there was a vast outpouring of grief, appreciation and anecdotes – from the general public and fellow comics alike. Now, his son, Bob, is doing what Barry’s humility did not allow: revealing the story of the man behind the jokes. This book is an ode to both Barry’s incredible life and to the lessons he so generously imparted on the art of comedy during his sixty-year career.

Written with her trademark deadpan humour, Urzila's memoir is full of great stories about both the big things in life and the little things. Urzila's accidental beginning in stand-up has led to an incredibly successful career in comedy, with regular gigs on television as well as sell-out shows in comedy festivals across New Zealand and Australia. But life hasn't always been a bundle of laughs. Urzila talks candidly about her childhood with a great family, apart from her abusive dad, and about growing up in South Africa.

Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider is the latest one-person show from renowned monologist and former SNL comedian. She tells stories about her family: her daughter, her husband, and her mother. Poignant and funny. This show had successful theater runs in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Written together with friend and journalist Boyd Hilton, the audiobook follows a year in the lives of Matt Lucas and David Walliams in every unfiltered detail: the good, the bad, the mundane and the meaningful. It is a year that includes writing, rehearsing, filming, Live8, going to America, and undertaking a mammoth 100-date, seven-month tour where Little Britain goes in search of Great Britain.

Carl Reiner - legendary comedian, actor, novelist, and director - was a creator, writer, and producer for The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1999, he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

This is the story of how four people, grouped together inside a set of offices five floors above a greengrocer's shop on Shepherd's Bush Green in West London, scaled the heights of British comedy.

Billy, the ground-breaking biography of the nation's favourite iconoclast, gave millions of readers a fascinating insight into the personal and professional life of the genius that is Billy Connolly. Now, in the sequel to that best-selling book, the award-winning Pamela Stephenson celebrates life with the Scottish beastie as he hits the big six-oh.

Brit Happens chronicles Mullinger’s lifetime of adventures, from his beginnings as a shy and nervous kid collecting comedy records at the neighborhood video store, to rising through the ranks of GQ magazine and meeting his personal idols Jerry Seinfeld and Paul McCartney, to imagining the possibility of another life in Canada. From the highs and lows of London to beginning anew in New Brunswick, Brit Happens tells gut-busting stories of success and failure and the unpredictable grind of stand-up comedy.

In Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson regaled listeners with uproarious stories of her bizarre childhood. In Furiously Happy, she explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. And terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.

In The British Bloke Decoded, writer, comedian and regular bloke, Geoff Norcott peels back the layers of blokedom, revealing the truth behind the sometimes inexplicable behaviour of Britain's husbands, dads and brothers. Based on 46 years of field research and almost scientific insights, Geoff digs deep into subjects as wide as: the value of Banter, the surprising roots of Mansplaining, the near impossibility of getting blokes to send birthday cards, and whether there could be a medal system for Hoovering.

Martin Short, one of today's most inventive and popular comic actors, is best known for his work on Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and in the films The Three Amigos and The Father of the Bride. The creator of such memorable characters as Jiminy Glick, Ed Grimley, and Irving Cohen, Short returned to Broadway in the "alternate autobiography" Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. Here he talks with Dick Cavett.

Since winning the Perrier Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, Dominic Holland has gone on to become one of the UK’s best loved comedians. He’s worked with Armando Iannucci, Rob Brydon and supported Eddie Izzard on tour. He is also the father of Tom Holland (best known for starring in the blockbuster Spider-man movies) and made the brilliant 2017 Dominic Holland Eclipsed Edinburgh Fringe show out of the experience of being a superhero’s dad.

¿Hay alguien que no haya reído con este artista de talla mundial? Charles Chaplin, el gran "Charlot", fue un actor, director, escritor, productor y compositor británico ganador del Óscar de Hollywood. Con casi 90 películas de cine mudo y sonoro, ha llegado a convertirse en la figura más representativa del cine mudo, el cual le ha dado su fama mundial y la consideración de uno de los grandes genios de la historia del cine.