Off with the motley

I Must Collect Myself
By Maureen Lipman
Simon & Schuster, �18.99

A Still Untitled (Not Quite) Autobiography
By Ron Moody
JR Books, �18.99

Although both of these books, by two of Britain's best-loved Jewish comedy actors, are autobiographical, neither is your classically constructed life story.

Ron Moody coyly avoids the category, at least in his title, possibly because, as his book involuntarily leads you to believe, the author would rather have the kind of attention that comes from being the subject of someone else's inquiry into what makes a comic genius tick, than have had to generate his own.

I have no reason to say this other than because the snappily titled A Still Untitled etc (hereinafter referred to as "Moody's book") is in large part a confession of the mountainous heights and many-fathom depths of a performer's ego. And, as Moody admits in this exploration of a comic actor's performing art, there is nothing that so calms the nerves, soothes the brow and bolsters the courage needed to get up on stage than what Moody calls Personal Praise (his caps).

He cleverly frames his book in a quest for what he calls the "Enigma". This apparently is that indefinable thing an actor knows is missing from a performance and has yet to find. Here, the search is triggered by a relatively recent production of Trevor Griffiths's modern classic, Comedians, in which Moody played Eddie Waters, a former comic who now teaches stand-up hopefuls in an evening class. (Other members of the cast included Martin Freeman and David Tennant).

Moody uses the lack of praise he received for this as his starting point in his search for Enigma, a search that extends over 50 years of showbiz that began at the London School of Economics, which Moody hoped would serve as a springboard to a career as an academic dramatist in the mould of GB Shaw.

By contrast, Lipman's book is remarkable for its absence of ego. Remarkable, that is, considering that this actor who is currently turning in a terrific performance in the West End as a battleaxe wife in a revival of J. B. Priestley's When We Are Married, bears the pressure of performance with an enviably well-adjusted sangfroid. Whereas Moody talks about art, Lipman is concerned with life. The book reveals a woman who has moved on from being the full-time widow of the great television dramatist Jack Rosenthal.

Which is not say that, in this series of musings, Rosenthal does not figure strongly. He has in her previous memoirs and no doubt always will in her written reflections. But Lipman's breezy, gently philosophical self-portrait is brimful of life as it is, as opposed to how it once was. The particular contrast here is between the rehearsed control needed on stage and the chaos that awaits as soon as you step off it.

While playing Madame Armfeldt in Sondheim's A Little Night Music, Lipman ran round the back off the theatre in full costume to give hell to some noisy partygoers, only to discover the party was hosted by the production company that made the TV series Skins in which not only had she appeared but to whose very same party she had been invited.

Offstage at the Duchess, where Lipman was playing the lead in her show Glorious, she was "mugged" - actually, conned - by a Portuguese lady purporting to be destitute. Lipman fed her in the caf�, and gave her money and a ticket to the show.

The book's 21 witty monologues created and written by Lipman feature such characters as an Aussie mammographer and X-factor style contestant. While they sometimes feel as erratic as they are eclectic - there is a moving and wry account of giving the new man in her life, Guido, a tour around her home town of Hull as well as a heartfelt cry for justice for Burma's dissident politician Aung San Suu Kyi - each is delivered with a lightness of touch that leaves you feeling not so much that you have shared some of the author's life with her, but rather that you have joined her for a stimulating and entertaining coffee.

Source: http://www.thejc.com/arts/book-reviews/43822/off-motley

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