EVERYONE LOVES YOU WHEN YOU’RE DEAD
(AND OTHER THINGS I LEARNED FROM FAMOUS PEOPLE)
Neil Strauss
£20, Canongate

As ordinary, non-famous civilians, we’re pretty cocksure condemning of post-modern fame. I mean, what exactly is the job description? But whether we like it or not even the rattiest micro-lab celebs fulfil a cultural function. Specifically, they retrain our focus off the swingeing cuts, endless wars and the general crumbling of society. And it’s nothing new, either. What is the Bible if not Heat minus the sweat-patch pics? Brad and Angelina are clearly Adam and Eve, only more glamourous. Judas? Any kiss’n’teller worth their siliconed treasure chests. And as for Samson. Hello? David Beckham when he had a buzzcut. Every archetype of today’s celeblimia is there to binge on and regurgitate. All that current greedy gossip columns have done is taken that simple storytelling tradition and cranked it up to its ultimate technicolour conclusion. If you want an insight into the inner workings of contemporary fame and the effect it has on a person then you need look no further than Neil Strauss’s gloriously titled book.

Strauss, a senior writer for Rolling Stone and The New York Times, has harvested together the fruits of 20 years’ labour as interviewer-in-chief to the great and not-so-good of the celebrity goldfish bowl and the results are fantastically riveting. We learn of Madonna’s fascination with prescription drugs (“I like to collect them,” she says, “but not take them.”), of Marilyn Manson’s “fetish” for prosthetic limbs and how some fans have begged him to stub fags out on their faces and that Paris Hilton is a racist, (“I can’t stand black guys. I would never touch one. It’s gross.”) among many, many more encounters. He talks sex with (who else?) Russell Brand, drugs with (who else?) Noel Fielding and death with (who else?) Johnny Cash. Strauss reckons, “You can learn a lot about a person in a minute – if you choose the right minute”, which sounds straightforward enough but is actually a rare skill. Ultimately, this collection shows that interviewing is like a one-night stand: you meet as strangers, proceed to intimacy in an indecently short space of time and then you leave as strangers again. It’s a weird transaction, but one that as you read here is extremely intriguing/entertaining and makes you realise why some people should only ever be known for one night.

I LEFT MY TENT IN SAN FRANCISCO
Emma Kennedy
£8.99, Ebury Press

Speaking of ill-fated travels, Emma Kennedy’s follow-up to her bestselling 2009 memoir, The Tent, The Bucket And Me, about her childhood camping holidays with her parents, sees her embarking on adulthood as she sets off for America with her best friend Dee in the hope of finding work and adventure. This was in 1989 when venturing Stateside “still had a cache of wonder and seemed untroubled and on top”. Both women feel ready to take on the world, but is the world ready for them? Predictably, things don’t go to plan and the pair lurch from one pushing-the-boundaries-of-credulity scrape to another.

What is so effective about the book is the way Kennedy creates a real sense of intimacy with the reader; you feel like you’re really along for this crazy ride with them. The feeling of actually being there is helped in no small part by the comic deftness of the writing, which isn’t surprising considering Kennedy’s other day job in her multitasking career is in comedy. Cockle-warming and LOL funny, ironically this is a brilliant book to take on your own travels.

TEN POUND POM
Niall Griffiths
£8.99, Parthian

We all think we know Australia, don’t we? Even if we’ve never set foot there. It’s partly because we’ve always had strong links with the country, what with all that sending our convicts over there, but largely because Aussieness by dint of the twin invasion of their soaps and gap-yearers has become such a part of our culture. Ten Pound Pom, however, turns all our preconceptions about Antipodean life on their head.

Back in 1976, Niall Griffiths’ family emigrated to Brisbane under a scheme sponsored by the Oz government whereby Brits could move there for a tenner. Griffiths was nine at the time; 12 when the family returned to Liverpool. Thirty years on, he returns Down Under to retrace the journey the family made from Brisbane to Perth, alternating the narrative between the past and the present. Part unconventional travelogue, part autobiography, Griffiths – as you will probably have guessed from his writing in this very magazine – doesn’t rose-tint romanticise his childhood home like those ubiquitous TV life relocation shows but rather sticks to his usual, unique ranty style. However, whereas some writers whose MO is professional ire grate, after a while Griffiths tempers his look-back-in-anger routine with genuine perception and reflection meaning that the book is a remarkably meditative take on what it’s like to be – as Griffiths describes it himself – a “tourist” through your own childhood.

Jason Jones gets between the covers with Madonna and Paris Hilton