My Booky Wook is a memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

, written by English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 comedian and actor Russell Brand

Russell Brand

Russell Edward Brand is an English comedian, actor, columnist, singer, author and radio/television presenter.Brand achieved mainstream fame in the UK in 2004 for his role as host of Big Brother spin-off, Big Brother's Big Mouth. His first major film role was in the 2007 film St Trinians...

, published in 2007 by Hodder & Stoughton

Hodder & Stoughton

Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.-History:The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged fourteen, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational Union...

. It was released in North America and Australia in 2009 by HarperCollins Publishers.

Summary

This "warts and all" account of Brand's life follows, in vivid detail, the star's life from his troubled childhood in Gray's End Close, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

 to his first taste for fame in Stage School up to his turbulent drug addiction and his triumphant rise to fame from RE:Brand

RE:Brand

RE:Brand was a British documentary and comedy television program that aimed to take a challenging look at cultural taboos.It was conceived, written and hosted by Russell Brand, with the help of his comic partner for many projects, Matt Morgan. The series was shown on the now defunct digital...

 to Big Brother's Big Mouth to Hollywood.

Chapters

My Booky Wook is divided into four sections. The title itself is in the style of the fictional Nadsat

Nadsat

Nadsat is a fictional register or argot used by the teenagers in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. In addition to being a novelist, Burgess was also a linguist and he used this background to depict his characters as speaking a form of Russian-influenced English...

 language from A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....

; Brand explained the reference during his appearance on Have I Got News For You

Have I Got News for You

Have I Got News for You is a British television panel show produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been broadcast since 1990, currently the BBC's longest-ever running television panel show...

in December 2007.

Part I

1. April Fool
2. Umbilical Noose
3. Shame Innit?
4. Fledgling Hospice
5. "Diddle-Di-Diddle-Di"
6. How Christmas Should Feel
7. One McAvennie
8. I've Got a Bone to Pick with You
9. Teacher's Whiskey
10. "Boobaloo"
11. Say Hello to the Bad Guy

Part II

1. The Eternal Dilemma
2. Body Mist
3. Ying Yang
4. Click, Clack, Click, Clack
5. 'Wop Out a Bit of Acting'
6. The Stranger
7. Is This a Cash Card I See Before Me?
8. 'Do You Want Drama?'

Part III

1. Dagenham Is Not Damascus
2. Don't Die of Ignorance
3. Firing Minors
4. Down Among the Have-Nots
5. First-Class Twit
6. Let's Not Tell Our Mums
7. You're a Diamond
8. Call Me Ishmael. Or Isimir. Or Something...

Part IV

1. Mustafa Skagfix
2. A Gentleman with a Bike
3. Out of the Game
4. Hare Krishna Morrissey
5. And Then Three Come at Once

Critical reception

The book garnered mostly positive reviews. The Sun

The Sun (newspaper)

The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...

called it "candid, funny and moving." The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

claimed it was "better written and more entertaining than any number of the celebrity autobiographies that clog the shelves of bookshops." The book won the Biography of the year at the 2008 British Book Awards

British Book Awards

The Galaxy National Book Awards are a series of British literary awards focused on the best UK writers and their works, as selected by an academy of members from the British book publishing industry...

 and the Outstanding Literary Achievement at the 2009 Spike Guys' Choice Awards

Spike Guys' Choice Awards

The Spike Guys' Choice Awards is an awards show produced by the Viacom cable channel Spike and held since 2007. It is patterned after Viacom's MTV Movie Awards...

.

Film adaptation

Brand planned to star as himself in a film adaptation of the book, originally scheduled to be filmed by British director Michael Winterbottom

Michael Winterbottom

Michael Winterbottom is a prolific English filmmaker who has directed seventeen feature films in the past fifteen years. He began his career working in British television before moving into features...

at the end of 2008 or early in 2009. The project has since been shelved by Brand, who did not want American audiences to learn of his "chequered past" without reading the book first.

External links

• My Booky Wook press release
• Book review by the Sunday times.