Me Cheeta: the autobiography by James Lever

ISBN: 9780007280162

On my last day in motion pictures I found myself at the top of a monkey-puzzle tree in England, helping to settle a wager between that marvellous light comedian and wit Rex Harrison and his wife, the actress Rachel Roberts, and thinking, This is gonna look great in the obituaries, isn’t it? Fell out of a fucking tree.

I should have known from that opening paragraph that I wasn’t going to enjoy this book. It has that “amn’t I amusing and witty” narration style that, for me, simply fell flat. Perhaps it is just that I don’t know enough about the stars of the 1940s & 50s to get all the hilarious references and anecdotes. Or maybe it was just written in a style that left me uncaring. Who can say.

Actually, it was probably the fact that I was on the train that led to me reading this. I’d asked Himself if he had any book for me to try, and although he hadn’t read this one he said I could borrow it. So I read it for an hour and a half, and got so far through that I figured I’d try and finish it. But the second half, at least, of my reading was reduced to a skim through every second page. It just didn’t hold my attention in the slightest.

Other reviews: Iain Broome ; A class act