Book – Dear Fatty by Dawn French

I read another book, indeed a memoir that I wish I had thought of first. Perhaps I’ll do it in five years when everyone has forgotten this one. Having said that, obviously my books won’t get anywhere near the coverage that Dawn French gets so I can just nick the idea.Dawn French’s memoirs are written in letter form, each one is a chapter written to different people who have meant something in her life. Superb.Ms French of course is extremely funny lady but life as we know is not always a bundle of laughs. What struck me most were the letters to her Dad who committed suicide before she had even started college. I didn’t know about that and some of those chapters have the inevitable shadow of sadness but still with an air of cuteness.Admittedly, my eyes really picked up about a third of the way through when I read Ms French spent a year in New York, still in the dangerous late 1970s, when New York was NEW YORK. She won a place on a programme, due mainly through a teacher’s encouragement of her to join debate clubs and the like so she studied out there, living with different families. If that doesn’t give a teenager confidence I don’t know what will.The photographs testify to the author’s slimness in those days but she talks of loving her food and we can’t begrudge her that. The Dear Fatty in question appears to be the equally brilliant Jennifer Saunders. What a fantastic pair of comics they have been since they were first plucked for the Comic Strip series as the token women. And they still innovate and amuse now.There are also frequent letters to her best friend (BF) her mum, her daughter, her nieces and nephews and various members of her family along with an ex boyfriend or too. And there’s the ‘fan’ letters to David Cassidy and the riotous, more recent letters to Madonna.Finally she writes beautifully to her, sadly now ex-husband, Lenny Henry, only one mind, their life was and is private a fact that I love.Read if you like memoirs and/or if you have a sense of hilarity.8/10Inspiration factor 9½/10