Stephen Fry is known to have a way with words, so it shouldn’t be surprising that this chunky volume of more than 440 pages covers just one decade in his life. More remarkable than that: not once does it drag. So few years, so many words … all in all, so well paced.

It picks up the story where Moab is My Washpot left off 13 years ago, just as he sets off for Cambridge, ostensibly to get himself an education but, as fate would have it, to meet a raft of familiar names that go on to pepper the rest of the book.

It’s probably fair to say that anyone looking at his record before he set off to college, which included a remarkable episode that saw him thrown in jail, would not have expected him to go too far in life.

How wrong they would have been. Within a couple of years of leaving university he already had more money pouring in than most of us would know what to do with. He had a grand house in Norfolk all of his own, and another of which he owned a share in London. He had a fleet of classic cars to drive.

He had rewritten the script to Me and My Girl, performed as Melchet in Blackadder, and had the first series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie on the horizon. His writing was in high demand from papers and magazines and he knew, even that early on, that he would never be short of money again.

It’s as shamelessly honest an account of his shortcomings as it is a celebration of his triumphs and the tone is that of engaging chatter. Here is an author gossiping through his pages, all in the most natural possible manner. Auto-banter-ography.

Its one and only shortcoming? The fact that it comes to an end 20 years ago. Stephen Fry could no doubt write another two volumes this size of larger covering each of those missing decades. When he might find the time to do so, on the evidence of this volume’s packed itinerary, one can only guess.

Price: £20 (£9.50 from Amazon)
ISBN: 0718154835
Pages: 448
Publisher: Michael Joseph