The Word is out

Former Word presenter Terry Christian has just published his autobiography which is very sensibly entitled My Word, just in case you'd forgotten that he presented one of the most reviled (but watched) programmes in Channel Four's history.

Terry Christian knows we aren't that interested in his childhood and after a few dozen pages about growing-up in Manchester, we're given a wonderfully candid, occasionally bitchy memoir of a show that many of us loved to hate, but couldn't quite stop watching. I may like to drone on about worthy literary novels in translation, but my shameful secret is that I love reading gossipy memoirs like this.

It's all here: the feud with Mark Lamarr, the Oliver Reed incident (every chat show has at least one), 'Bruiser' DeCadenet and one of my favourite moments, the first and last appearance on British television by the band L7:


This book has the potential to be one of the top non-fiction beach reads this summer, so why have Orion decided to publish it in hardback at the beginning of June? I suppose it will come out in paperback sometime in December, by which time everyone will be buying hardbacks. I hope I'm wrong, as this entertaining, self-deprecating memoir deserves to sell.