Look Who It Is! – Alan Carr's Biography Reviewed
The Comedian And Comedy Show Presenter Tells His Story
Jun 18, 2009
Alan Carr's biography Look Who It Is goes beyond just funny. Sometimes it is so hilarious only a few pages can be read at a time before a pain in the ribs prompts a time-out. Far from being wearing, however, Look Who It Is entertains without fail, from Carr's early years, to his time as a corporate comedian, to the heights of having his own comedy show and the Tooth Fairy tour.
Alan Carr's Biography and His Early Years as an Accidental Comedy Show
Life wasn’t easy for little Alan, that’s for sure. With an uber-masculine football manager for a father, not a day would pass without Alan being branded a fairy, and that was just at home. At school, what with his buck-teeth, paunch and voice that, before it broke, can only be assumed to have been able to strip wallpaper, Alan Carr was frequently an accidental comedy show.
However this was a baptism of fire as Alan Carr, with enviable honesty, takes those events and negatives in his life and weaves them into a host of brilliant jokes that, throughout Look Who It Is, slowly evolves with Carr until they become a fully fledged routine available to view in many of his comedy show clips. It wasn't without a few roadblocks along the way though.
Alan Carr Finds Comedy in Real Life for Biography Look Who It Is
Any reader who has ever had a soul-crushing job will take heart in reading Look Who It Is as Alan Carr's biography explains all the dire jobs he had to suffer before becoming a comedian with his own comedy show, from being a call centre operative where he would be abused by customers, to working at a car assembly factory where the grease fumes meant that his days were simply a series of hallucinations and come-downs.
And when Carr does tell of breaking away from the tedium, and from the snotty corporate comedian gigs he had started taking on, there is a sense of genuine triumph, all be it with a quick dose of reality thereafter. But that is what makes Look Who It Is so brilliant as a biography. Whether as a warm-up act for comedy show host Jonathan Ross, or when discussing his close relationship with fellow Sunday Night Project host Justin Lee Collins, Alan Carr is hysterically candid about the far from glamorous reality of show-business.
Alan Carr’s Relationship With His Dad Becomes Highlight of Comedy Show in Look Who It Is
The relationship between Alan Carr and his football manager father Graham Carr rarely goes a page without being mentioned. The book is successful because of this strong through-line which gives a real and emotional back-bone to the story. Carr peppers biography Look Who It Is with a genuine feeling of being a disappointment to his father, only for the books final pages to show that he was always anything but.
With comedy that is, at all times, tasteful but debilitating, Alan Carr's biography is successful, intelligent and thoroughly entertaining, demonstrating powerful literary muscles that no doubt helped to make his comedy show such a success, and make biography Look Who It Is a genuine pleasure and a treat. Highly recommended.
(Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd; Page Count: 320 pages; Date Published (Hard Cover): 1 October 2008; ISBN-10: 0007278225; ISBN-13: 978-0007278220)
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