I bought the hard back edition of Jimmy Nail's autobiography from "Books" in Eldon Square, Newcastle (somewhat appropriately) for £5.
The book starts with an acknowledgements list, including a mention of Pat Roach and how Jimmy felt when he died during the making of the Auf Wiedersehen Pet two-part special. It then goes into Chapter One, discussing Jimmy's years growing up on Newcastle's East End Fairways estate. Predictably, Newcastle United get a mention just two paragraphs in. He also talks about how his Mam and Dad met.
Over 20 chapters, Jimmy discusses his horrible school years and his drinking and subsequent prison sentence for fighting, through to his ITV "Auf Wiedersehen Pet" debut and then the rest of his acting and singing career, including "Spender", "Crocodile Shoes" and making "Evita" with Madonna.
The book is his own words and this is often heart-warming, especially for someone who knows the accent and the rambling way in which Geordies often talk. He does write the way he speaks quite a lot. Annoyingly, his accent has changed over the years but by and large this is written in a very natural style.
The book is amusing in places. Jimmy mentions how one night on a music tour, he accidentally ate a whole packet of laxatives, thinking they were fruit pastilles. Of course, the inevitable happened, right on stage...
There are some sad stories as well as funny ones. Jimmy's bad lad ways when he was younger were possibly part of the grieving process he went through when his sister Shelagh died. There is also an account of Timothy Spall's leukemia.
One thing which bugged me about this book was that while Jimmy tries to make a distinction between himself and the character of Oz, he undoes this by using offensive language. He happily uses the words "poof" and "dyke" to describe gay men and women and French people get called "Frogs". He also points out that Oz making a remark about Wyman's colour in Auf Pet 4, was his idea because "that's what would happen in Newcastle". Not where I live it wouldn't! I resented this suggestion.
I would have liked more Auf Pet stories. There must have been plenty of hilarity behind the scenes on each of the series, despite various tragedies all the way through.
At the end of the book is a filmography as well as a list of TV programmes Nail has appeared in. I found this very useful but an album and single list would have been good as well.
I would recommend at least borrowing this book. With nearly 400 pages, it is an interesting read. The hard back version has quite large print but you can also buy this from Amazon in the form of an audio book.
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