25 July 2013
Usually
when you read an autobiography, you might find the first few chapters
interesting in seeing how the person's childhood and early career led
them to do whatever it is you know them for, but it's the inside
story of their successful years that you are really looking forward
to reading about. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to warn
you that ‘Going to Sea in a Sieve’, the autobiography of writer
and broadcaster Danny Baker, finishes in 1982, well before I had come
across him. Nevertheless, as a keen listener to Danny Baker's
Saturday morning show on BBC Radio Five Live, many of the stories of
his childhood were quite familiar to me. Like John Peel's
autobiography ('Margrave of the Marshes' by John Peel and Sheila
Ravenscroft, reviewed here in November 2006), you can really hear the
author's voice while you are reading. Danny Baker is a consummate
storyteller and his self deprecating wide-eyed wonder makes for a
likeable and often hilarious tale. The great potato robbery is the
first of many laugh-out-loud incidents in this first volume of the
Danny Baker story.
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