This is SF's second volume of memoirs, a decade after Moab is my Washpot, his account of childhood and troubled teenage years, culminating in brief imprisonment at 17 on remand for credit card fraud. The Fry Chronicles cover his university life at Cambridge, performing with the Footlights Club, and his early years and rise to fame as a comedy actor/writer.

A.J.A. Symons, author of The Quest For Corvo (a work SF extols here) once said that the object of a biography should be not to record, but to reveal. Like most memoirists, SF only partially reveals himself. He succeeds, certainly, in expressing his emotional insecurities - his constant feeling of being a fraud about to be exposed. He feels let down by the air of smug self-confidence his facial appearance conveys, regardless of his real emotions.

SF even feels his excellent 2.1 English degree at Cambridge was not quite kosher, the result not of hard study but an aptitude for answering exam questions. He fell short of getting a First because his dissertation work, requiring more honest toil, wasn't up to snuff. He praises the "real" scholars who outclass him in that way. But of course in saying so he undervalues his intellect, sharp wit, verbal acuity and phenomenal memory. All of these helped him greatly in establishing a strong presence in student theatre - he took roles in ten different plays in as many weeks. And that also reveals a capacity for hard work, however much SF presents himself as a dilettante. But even in theatre SF feels he's not quite the real thing: he can't sing or dance, he moves awkwardly and lacks the heroic mien to play Hamlet. But he does admit to possessing a critical acting skill, that of "pulling focus" either towards or away from oneself. And SF is very tall (6ft 5in / 1.96m), with a rich, booming voice.

SF has been openly gay for a long time, but reveals very little about his sexual experiences or his partners. I was quite content with that; explaining sexuality is as easy as describing colour to a blind person. I never expect to understand homosexuality; it is enough to respect and tolerate it in others. Curiously, SF speaks of being "90% gay"; the other 10% is not rationed evenly among women at large, but adheres to just one or two women he desperately admires. He doesn't say whether he got past first base with them, or even tried to. SF also reveals little about his decision to remain celibate for a 15-year period from the early '80s onwards, and says nothing at all about the events which broke that abstinence. This would have been interesting, but was obviously too personal, too intimate for him to explore openly.

SF interestingly pulls focus on a trait that has both helped him and hindered him in life, his propensity for desiring something immoderately. He speaks of his childhood passion for sugar and sweets (something I identify with totally), which has not left him. As a young man he acquired a passion for tobacco (I only had a stupid habit). Alcohol he likes, but never, apparently, to the point where it affected his health or ability to function. SF also hints darkly at a habit he acquired later than the period of these chronicles, perhaps cocaine, perhaps something for another book. To my surprise, he stoutly defends the virtues of tobacco and alcohol, contrary to current medical wisdom.

SF feels his prodigious memory is not extraordinary, but deeply connected to his passions; if you love English language and literature, you will remember it much better than the bank interest rate tables in the FT. Memory is motivation. But his passions have also been a weakness, at times short-circuiting his moral judgement. This is how he explained his brief foray into credit card fraud. The wanting the things he could buy somehow overrode the intellectual awareness that it was a bad idea. SF does not, even today, feel himself free of this weakness. He's an IT gadget freak, and must have all the latest gizmos immediately. But at least he can now afford them.

I like Stephen Fry very much. He's not desperately vain and smug. I fully share his views on science and religion, but suspect his politics are too wishy-washily leftish. Above all, he's a man who sets great store by human kindness as an ideal, referring to E.M. Forster's maxim that it was far worse to betray a friend than betray one's country. Friendship was paramount, the basis of all social cohesion.

SF is of course also a man who enjoys a laugh, and there are plenty in his anecdotes, as well as a lot of gossip. He even mischievously outed the late Jeremy Brett as gay (something one suspected). This news came not from personal acquaintance but from a fellow student, Dave Huggins, son of Brett and his ex, Anna Massey, when both senior Hugginses came to watch a play in which SF was performing.

A most enjoyable read, and yet most uneven. The second half of the book lapsed into the mere reportage Symons warned against. Perhaps this was due to publication pressures or maybe the laziness SF sometimes confesses. Still, for many pages I skated over the mundane side of lovie life - which actors had turned up for this or that rehearsal and what they were performing in next, who they had just broken up with, and which movie director was in the audience. And so on. With some showbiz writers or ghost writers, this stuff is routine, but for a man of SF's wit, it's just treading water. All the same, I recommend this book.

At OBCZ during meetup.

I really enjoyed Moab is my Washpot, so looking forward to the follow up. Thanks mike.

I realise I've had this quite a while, but I had to wait for a holiday period to read it at home as it had no hope of becoming a bagbook. Miketroll has written at length and I am in agreement with what he had to say, I too found myself glancing over some parts, particularly those which read more like diary entries, who where and when, but that could have also been because the gist of a lot of that was already in the public domain. We know who Fry's cohort were and mainly what they wrote and preformed in, what is always more interesting in the story behing the story. This also felt a little like the second book that needs to be written to get to the third and more interesting one, I hope! I loved the mental picture of Fry and Ben Elton's August outings in the London Clubs. Picturing them on a 'crusty' in above all place the Carlton Club had me grinning from ear to ear. I find Stephen Fry a fascination character, if we get another installment I would love more of him and less documentation. Neverthe, less I did enjoy it.

On the bookshelf up stairs.

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