And Away...

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I suppose it must have eaten away at me a bit somewhere… or I wouldn’t have been so chuffed,” he confesses. A keen football fan, he had trials for local team Middlesbrough FC, but abandoned his footballing dreams due to early-onset arthritis. Mortimer was impressed by the performance, particularly the character Tappy Lappy, which was Reeves attempting to tap dance while wearing a Bryan Ferry mask and planks on his feet. I’d also have preferred fewer recollections of playground antics and more about how it felt to lose his father in a car crash at the age of six or his experiences of depression. I’d listened to their audiobook last year and discovered he’d had a heart bypass and also that he’d been a solicitor before he became a comedian.

I generally avoid the celebrity author books, but TV and comedy legend Bob Mortimer seemed like one to try and I had high hopes. With his status as national treasure assured, Bob Mortimer can expect a lot of goodwill for his debut novel, an amiable crime thriller. This review probably doesn't make sense and may not be very polished but the take home is: Go and get a copy and read it and enjoy.The book, too, grows more confident in talking about serious subjects as it progresses and it’s the honesty and openness that he allows in Gone Fishing that make And Away…, by the end, an unexpectedly moving read.

On the same night, Gary is also abandoned by a mysterious young woman with a button nose and severe fringe with whom he tries to flirt over steak and chips. I did make a good connection with a girl, but that blew up in my face and smacked my arse with a fish slice. This is a funny, sad, at times fairly predictable but nonetheless very entertaining crime novel with a good dollop of love and the inevitable Bob Mortimer absurdisms peppered throughout. Agreeing to meet Brendan, a work colleague after work, opens a can of worms that Gary could never have foreseen. The show became successful in South London and eventually outgrew Goldsmith's Tavern, moving in 1988 to the Albany Empire in Deptford.And now, six years on, the heart condition that once threatened his career has instead led to new success on BBC2’s Gone Fishing. After leaving university with an LLM in Welfare Law, he moved to London and became a solicitor for Southwark Council. Instead Gary focusses on a gorgeous brunette, Emily, sitting at the bar reading a book titled The Satsuma Complex (how clever is that! It is stridently confident when it comes to hitting you around the head with sentiment until you relent and start crying, too. On the day of his hospital admission, he married Lisa Matthews, his girlfriend of 22 years, under a special marriage licence express from London.