Putting the Rabbit in the Hat

I’m not a big fan of celebrity autobiographies. No matter their talent, or lack of it, I find that too often they fall into the I did this and then I did that and after that I did this trap. A string of events narrated as though the writer’s just remembered them and is ticking them off a list.

But there are some I like. Sandy Toksvig’s Between the Stops is an all-time favourite book. And Putting the Rabbit in the Hat isn’t far behind. I think what I like about them both is that they’re not so much a remembered record of achievements, but an attempt – I’d say successful in both cases – to make you understand why they do what they do, what it means to them, and all the things that happened to them along the way to the position they hold today. You get to understand the person behind the achievements.

And in Brian Cox’s particular case you can enjoy, if you’ve a mind to, some witheringly straightforward opinions about some of those he’s worked with. Kevin Spacey is ‘a great talent, but a stupid, stupid man’. The director of the film Rob Roy was a ‘complete arsehole’. Steven Seagal is ‘as ludicrous in real life as he is on screen’. And his description of filming the first series of Sharpe would almost be funny if the events he describes weren’t so awful as to make you feel the cold, taste the bad food and wonder at such haplessly shambolic arrangements.

It's a really entertaining book.

(And I love the fact that though they know each other well enough, neither he nor Anthony Hopkins have ever discussed Hannibal Lector.)