My Favourite People and Me 1978-1988

Alan Davies

A memoir about growing up in the 1980s from the QI favourite and star of Jonathan Creek

In a unique memoir that's part Nick Hornby, part Where Did It All Go Right, Alan Davies tells the story of growing up in a house in Essex in the 1980s where the TV was never turned off. While his dad tried to bring up his three children alone, Alan did his best to pursue life outside of the school he labelled 'The House of Fascists and Bullies'. His bedroom walls reflected his changing enthusiasms. From Charlie's Angels to Paul Weller, pictures and posters were put up and pulled down with indecent haste as Alan's interests veered wildly through a list that included Debbie Harry, nicking stuff, Adam and the Ants, tagging the back of bus seats in indelible marker, chicken's lib and Jimmy White. But always football. And always Arsenal.

Warm, personal and laugh-out-loud funny, My Favourite People is both autobiography and nostalgia-fest. 'An attempt,' as Alan outs it, 'to remember what I liked as a boy/youth/idiot and to work out why. There are also, he promises, 'some pictures . . .'

Alan Davies is an English comedian, writer and actor, best known for starring in the hit BBC series Jonathan Creek and his regular appearances as a panellist on QI. My Favourite People is his first book.