Odd Boy Out, Gyles Brandreth
Odd Boy Out, Gyles Brandreth
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Odd Boy Out

Author: Gyles Brandreth

Narrator: Gyles Brandreth

Unabridged: 14 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Michael Joseph

Published: 09/16/2021


Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

The long-awaited autobiography from beloved star of Just a Minute, QI, Have I Got News For You and Celebrity Gogglebox.

There are few people Gyles Brandreth doesn't know or hasn't met - from the Queen to the Sex Pistols, Mandela and Marlene Dietrich to TS Eliot, he's the celebrities' celebrity, as familiar and welcome to us on radio and screens as biscuits are to a cup of tea.

Now a grandparent, looking back on his remarkable life, he traces his steps back to being a three-year-old tearing around 1950s London on his tricycle, to boarding school where he had an appendix removed simply to get out of football, to Bedales, where he met Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (and became intimate with a matron), to balancing his growing love of theatre with his love for educating, the 'woolly jumper years', the stint as an MP, the years of close friendship with the Queen, to becoming a septuagenarian Twitter star and stalwart fixture in British entertainment.

Throughout it all, there are lessons to be learned as Gyles derives wisdom and wit from his extraordinary encounters. Full of stories and full of heart, this is Gyles as you don't yet know him.

© Gyles Brandreth 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

About Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth is a writer, performer, former MP, and government whip whose career has ranged from hosting Have I Got News For You to starring in his own award-winning musical revue in London's West End. Currently a reporter with the One Show on BBC1 and a regular on Radio 4's Just a Minute, his acclaimed Victorian detective stories, the Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries, are now being published in nineteen countries around the world and are currently in development for television.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Hilay on October 18, 2021

Giles Brandreth is pompous,intelligent, irritating and completely self absorbed and by the end of this book I had truly had enough of the continual name dropping and navel gazing. I speed read the last section as I was sooo very bored by it. However, I can’t deny that some of the earlier vignettes o......more

Goodreads review by Monty on March 19, 2023

Gyles Brandreth is a very entertaining oddity, full of apparent contradiction. He speaks with a beautifully modulated camp and fruity voice and describes men making passes at him throughout his life: from the Prep School master who fell in love with him when he was a boy, to Frankie Howerd stripping......more

Goodreads review by Pandafeet on December 21, 2021

Superbly entertaining early memoir of a superbly entertaining enthusiastic man. Who strangely likes a lot of the things I myself hold dear, even down to the mini loaves of Hovis bread. Written in an amusing talkative style. I absolutely loved this book.......more

Goodreads review by Kexx on September 22, 2022

I have a guilty pleasure - Gyles Brandreth. He makes me laugh and I love his amazing stories! So 5*s from me.......more

Goodreads review by Nicholas on September 20, 2022

An interesting and amusing autobiography. Nice stories and a good pace. Very enjoyable!......more


Quotes

Hilarious, ribald, eye-popping, unforgettable, will make you laugh out loud Daily Mail

A whirlwind of witticisms and of funny tales, both short and tall . . . 'I feel I have lived my life in a magic garden where the sun is always shining' he writes, and in Odd Boy Out he offers us yet another glimpse of that bright, shining sun Mail on Sunday

Warm, witty, charming. A moving and very affectionate family history. An enthusiast for life The Times

A fabulous raconteur with a great many tricks up his sleeve. His infectious zest for life means he has a story for almost every well-known person you can think of Daily Telegraph

A magnificent raconteur. A witty account of a most unusual life Independent

Brilliant pen portraits of his father and myriad friends present a framework for Gyles's contemplation of his extraordinary life. Light-hearted and dark events alike are described with his customary deceptively jaunty style, making them funny, moving, and sometimes deeply shocking

Staggeringly brilliant, funny and touching, I loved it

A hilarious and revealing account of growing up and coming of age in an apparently well-to-do but always strapped-for-cash middle-class English family Eastern Daily Press

Brandreth has been an expert cheerer-upper for more than 60 years . . . Ebullient. Full of fun, famous names and sparkling facts Daily Mail

He's cheery, fun and has a fabulous grasp of the English language, so Gyles Brandreth's autobiography makes for a scintillating read. His hilarious - and sometimes moving - account of his life from early childhood days through to the adult world of politics and television is candid. It is also a story around his everyday family life, and about happiness, ambition and love. It offers a fascinating insight into a portrait of Britain, too People’s Friend Magazine