Well I have just finished listening to the latest instalment of Stephen Fry’s autobiography. What a bastard! This is no reflection on the audio book – more of this in a moment. No the reason for the profanity is because he ends the book on a cliff hanger. You just do not end autobiographies like that – it is so frustrating and of course so naughty as well. He knows that he has his hooks into you and that you can’t wait for the next instalment – post 1987.
So what was the book like. Well first of all I think the audiobook will be much better than reading it because Fry himself reads it to you. This turns the book into an intimate confessional, as though Fry is opening his heart to you, and you alone. It is also rather like listening to Harry Potter beyond Hogwarts as Fry deals with his life at Cambridge and show business up to 1987.
There is one thing that does come through more than anything else – Cambridge made Stephen Fry. He is an hugely talented person but without Cambridge he probably would be some anonymous senior tutor at a public school or red brick university. He got all his breaks from who he got to know at Cambridge. In may ways this book is a description of how England really works. It is not the old boys network but rather knowing people in the right place. It still means that you have work hard once you get the break or introduction it just means that you get the introduction in the first place. So if Fry had gone to Hull it is much less likely to have been as successful so quickly. It also helps that because Cambridge only takes the most talented students they tend to have a double advantage over none Oxbridge graduates. Being really talented and knowing people is a really powerful combination for advancement.
Overall it is a wonderful audiobook. It makes you scream with joy and anger at the same time in many places and I for one can’t wait for the next instalment.
Now for the illustration. I had intended to draw the two portraits together but for reasons that are too pitiful to mention I didn’t. Then I though I would just merge the two in Photoshop – this didn’t work out either. So I gace up on the whole idea and plonked the two together. I quite like these as I believe they show that I am making real progress. Let us hope that this continues.
Simon Marchini LRPS
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@simonmarchini
