Good reads.

I’m one of those people who takes ages to finish a book because I’m reading a couple at a time, but I finished a few I enjoyed (and show my rather eclectic tastes).

showtimePat Leahy’s “Showtime”, about FF from the mid 1990s to the Cowen administration is a great read. I’d never read it before, and reading now, in the current context with the benefit of hindsight, it’s a shocking indictment of the short term amateurism of the 97-2007 FF/PD government. It’s a pacey read, and Leahy has that great ability to dig out those gems of personal elements (and laugh out loud moments) that pepper Irish politics. The detail would make one think that many a university will make a grab for “The Leahy Papers” when the time comes! Well worth a read.

Graham McCann’s “Bounder”, a biography of Terry-Thomas, on the other hand, is very much for the committed fan. Few people under 40 know who Terry-Thomas even was, but from a period starting in the 1950s right up to afternoon repeats of his movies in the 1980s, Terry-Thomas’ performance as an upper class cad and scoundrel was hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Basil Brush and Dick Dastardly (of Wacky Races fame, or as we know it, Catch The Pigeon) were based on him.

Terry-Thomas

Terry-Thomas

The book is a detailed record of his career as one of Britain’s first TV stars and through movies like “Those magnificent men in their flying machines”. Then there’s a sad and depressing fall into poverty caused by Parkinson’s Disease, eventually being rescued through trojan fundraising efforts by his cousin, fellow comedian Richard Briers. As I said, a good read but one for the fans.

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