London - Has the death knell finally sounded for the celebrity autobiography? Oh, let us hope so.
Let us put our hands together and pray for the guillotine of good taste to fall on these annual piles of self-serving pap.
After a decade or so of inane dribblings from Reality Show Joes and years of hardback, hard-to-swallow ego explosions courtesy of random National Treasure Comedians, the me-me-me-memoir seems to be on its last legs.
New sales figures suggest we have at last fallen out of love with the genre. Saturation point has been reached.
Not so long ago, big shots could always depend on a big hit to swell their Christmas coffers, no matter how badly it was written or how hurriedly put together. For — just like perfume or socks — a star’s book was a foolproof festive gift. Yet new offerings from Stephen Fry, John Cleese, Graham Norton and Paul Merton have all failed to shine.
According to book industry data providers Nielsen BookScan, the titles by Cleese (So Anyway) and Fry (More Fool Me) sold only about 60 000 copies each before Christmas Day. Graham Norton’s second volume of memoirs, The Life And Loves Of A He-Devil, sold 44 000 while Paul Merton’s Only When I Laugh shifted 17 000.
Glamour model Kelly Brook could tempt only 8 000 readers to part with cash for Close Up. And that is despite a candid description of how she expressed displeasure to boyfriends such as actor Jason Statham and rugby player Danny Cipriani: “He turned around, only to be met with my fist in his face.”
Charlie Redmayne, UK chief executive of HarperCollins, revealed earlier this month that he had slashed his budget for buying up celebrity life stories as the market was underperforming — and was too risky.
Big names have to be paid large advances, but their fan base is fickle and their books often lack longevity. “You’d have three weeks of sales and then it would be gone,” he told the Independent.
Overall, book sales in the autobiographies and memoirs section were down four percent compared with 2013. Back in 2012, sales then were down a whopping 45 percent on the 2008 peak. That was a golden year, with Paul O’Grady’s At My Mother’s Knee passing the 375 000 copies mark in the weeks before Christmas.
Eventually, it sold more than 600 000 in hardback alone. No wonder. His book is as much about working-class life in post-war Birkenhead as it is about his journey from altar boy (“my first drag”) to becoming his alter-ego Lily Savage.
Witty, acerbic and honest, it set a benchmark of quality which few have managed to emulate since — including O’Grady himself.
Part of the problem is that stars with hit books are called upon to write follow-ups, which are never as appealing as the originals. Stephen Fry is on his third volume, while glamour model Katie Price appears to be on her 33rd.
Philip Jones, editor of the Bookseller, said: “There’s a little bit of exhaustion. You expect a big celebrity book to be selling 200,000 at this point and a lot of them aren’t.”
Supposedly blockbuster political memoirs, which authors such as Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton were paid fortunes to write, have been met with indifference. But while many sports memoirs struggle — including a slew of dull books by participants in the 2012 Olympics — former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has sold over 850 000 copies of his fascinating autobiography, which came out last year.
So while we may have had enough of John Cleese complaining about his wives, we have not lost our appetite for an interesting celebrity tale, well told.
This year, the hits came from unexpected quarters. The memoir of ‘Oxo mum’ Lynda Bellingham, who died of cancer in October this year, made it into the top five of the bestsellers’ list selling 270 000 copies, making it the most popular autobiography of 2014.
The only others to sell well came from footballer Roy Keane, motorcycle racer Guy Martin and the debut offering from 24-year-old video blogger Zoe Sugg. The rest, including titles from actor Brendan O‘Carroll (Mrs Brown), cricketer Kevin Pietersen, skater Jayne Torvill, comedian Danny Baker and X Factor’s Sam Bailey are going nowhere fast.
Frankly, I’m not surprised. Having been given the task or reviewing these dreadful celebrity books for this newspaper, I can’t wait to see the back of them.
I have been force fed too much celebrity trivia for my own good — with terrible consequences. I can recall that Justin Lee Collins always suffered from ear, nose and throat problems, but I can’t remember where I left my car keys. The fact Cheryl Fernandez-Versini suffers from a cotton wool phobia is always with me, but I forget why I opened my desk drawer.
I know about Lorraine Kelly’s first car phone, ex X Factor judge Tulisa’s dermatillomania (picking her face until it bleeds) and that Anton Du Beke’s real name is Tony Beak. Jack Dee was once so broke he lived on toast and crisps, Peter Kay’s mum once made a cross-stitch cushion for Eric Clapton’s daughter and Amanda Holden’s ex-husband Les Dennis had a habit of breaking wind.
On and on it goes. Tailor-made for the attention-deficient, trivia-obsessed Twitter generation. Everywhere you read, new depths of banality are plumbed by stars who fail to understand we are not quite as obsessed with their every dull thought as they are. - Daily Mail