Adrian Edmondson

Berserker!
An Autobiography
Adrian Edmondson
Read by Adrian Edmondson

DURATION 10 hours, FORMAT eAudiobook — Unabridged.
LANGUAGE - English. RELEASED ON 28 September 2023

As a rule, I shy away from biography books, actual physical copies of them I mean, because so often, they are just way too long! I do rather enjoy the audio versions though. You never really know exactly what you're going to get with a biography or autobiography; sometimes you get a formal-ish book that's been ghost-written to show more within an inch of its life or more often you get a tome which feels as though a good edit would improve things no end. At least with the audio book you can speed them up to shorten the listening time! Barack Obama, A Promised Land is nearly 30 hours long! So listening to it at 1.50 speed takes a good chunk out of your listening time.
I was immediately drawn to Ade Edmondson's Berserker. The striking cover shows Edmondson wearing a horned helmet and the fact that he himself was reading the book made me reserve it right away.

I've always been a fan of his, way back to The Young Ones days, even though Vyvyan Bastard was a bit scary to me at the time, Comic Strip Presents, Bottom and, more recently, his many straight roles. He's been in my life from a young age and this book was a chance to get to know the person a little better.

I was very taken with his offhand, chatty style. like reminiscing with an old friend. The book jumped around from timeline to timeline and subject to subject which felt like a real conversation, rather than a shopping list! He talked at length about his childhood and school. His family moved around quite a bit and he didn't have a great time. I found some of the content both sad and brutal. I really felt for him all the more because he was so stoic about it, not dwelling or looking for sympathy.

His story felt so honest as he went through his education and decided what he wanted to do. If you are thinking of the screen or stage for your career, this book shows that it's hard work and you have to be inventive to find your way. Ade wasn't always set on the idea of becoming an actor and has dabbled in music too.

Of course, we all wanted to hear about his friendship with Rik Mayall and that was most entertaining. Warts and all, there are no heroes in this book and Ade is very honest about his own behaviour in their partnership and I felt a bit sad. Rik was such a giant personality. I did relate to this, sometimes people just grow apart.

As his story progresses, Ade speaks very openly and matter-of-fact-ly about his mental health. In fact, when discussing it with a friend, the friend pointed out that maybe his thoughts weren't quite 'normal'. I'm sure most of us can relate. He talks about how he has worked on his mental health and it really normalised this. I hope that people reading the book or listening to it might find that this would encourage them to think about counselling or therapy or simply the good practice of maintaining our mental health. Maybe one day we'll just do that, the same way we maintain our car or house.

One of my favourite parts was when he spoke about meeting his wife and how he feels about her now. It made me feel warm and fuzzy!

All in all, I found the book very charming and interesting. It was very relatable to me and although some of the subject matter was at times a little moving or disturbing, it was genuinely funny, heartwarming and amusing.

I'd say that it's one of the best audiobooks I've listened to, it really was that good, and so I would thoroughly recommend it. show less

Plenty of humour as you might expect - but also moving in places. The Berserker analogy running through it wore a bit thin and he sounded a bit of a prat during his school days. But it also seemed honest to the point of being quite raw at times and I'm not sure too many would envy his childhood, so...

There's a lot about that but then it clearly shaped most of his life and not in a good way. But there was still enough humour in it to laugh several times even during that part. And a fair bit show more about "the comedy years". I enjoyed this far far more than Rik Mayall's own spoof autobiog which I always found enormously smug and unfunny - and Edmondson pretty much confirms that fame changed Mayall for the worse and he really was vain and self regarding - exactly as he often came across (supposedly for comic effect). And his description of the Bottom live tours explained pretty well why I started to find them less funny as time wore on. And why he stopped wanting to do them, despite them being hugely successful. And why, ultimately, they stopped working together.

For anyone who loved the shows he used to do, I think it's an interesting and well written read. show less

if you are a fan of the young ones, filthy rich and catflap, bottom and the comic strip presents, then this book may disappoint as it tends to show anohter side of vivian not quite expected. but what a hoot of a book, and you cannot help but actually picture adrian edmondson himself in the main role (sorry jennifer!).

this is the first book by Ben Young i have read and i can honestly say, this was a fantastic read. i met Ben at the TBR Con in Knoxville, TN and he was so nice and just a joy to talk to. for me, this book checked all the boxes. it roped me in at the start and kept me completely interested throughout the entire book! 5 star read for sure