Fast approaching his fortieth birthday, Andrew is cornered at a family gathering by the nine-year-old son of his brother-in-law's sister. Having seen him as a talking head on TV, the boy asks, 'What are you?' It is a question so frank and simple that Andrew doesn't have an immediate answer to hand.
So, with hilarious self-deprecation, he sets out to retrace how he got to where he is today. Seventeen precarious jobs in seventeen years: from trolley collector at Sainsbury's to high-flying film critic sipping cocktails with Will Smith and Jerry Bruckheimer on a yacht in Cannes. This is Andrew's tale of rubbing shoulders with the world's biggest stars: pissing off Christini Ricci, having his hairstyle mocked by Noel Gallagher, trying not to wake Clive James from his afternoon nap, having his apple pie eaten by Bob Geldof, and somehow stumbling into the next dream job.
Along the way, he's been the world's worst gossip columnist, an almost-hip young gunslinger at the NME, a Radio 1 DJ (enduring a hellish Radio 1 roadshow in a car park in Birmingham) , an ITV presenter, EastEnders scriptwriter, ghost writer for a major TV personality and much, much more. It charts a world of hedonism, mundanity, towering egos, shallow idiocy and occasional moments of mind-blowing joy. And, of course, being sent shit in a box.
Read more Continue reading Read less ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Collins was born in 1969 outside Philadelphia, grew up in Connecticut, and graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, in 1991. That same year he joined Fodor's staff and over the next two years edited or co-edited more than a dozen travel guides. In 1994 he conceived of and developed Fodor's Gay Guide to the USA, the first edition which published in 1996. He's worked as an editor or writer on more than 100 travel books and Collins writes a syndicated weekly travel column called "Out of Town," which appears on several Web sites, as well as in gay and lesbian newspapers nationwide. Presently he divides his time between New Mexico, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and logs more than 40,000 miles annually driving across North America. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more Continue reading Read less
