eYE Marty: The newly discovered autobiography of a comic genius

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Tanti, troppi dettagli sui contratti televisivi e radiofonici, dicevo, contrapposti a una scarsa capacità narrativa vera e propria: mancano le sequenze, ci sono salti temporali, non si capisce bene quando si svolgano certe situazioni e, se non fossero indicati gli anni in alcuni momenti, ci si troverebbe in un vero e proprio limbo narrativo. As for his famous eyes, the cause is pretty mundane: an operation for Graves’ disease (just like Rod Stewart and Orca Winfrey have), which resulted in his eyes being more protruded; he also had a squint. Beginning in the dying days of variety theatre, he went from the behind-the-scenes scriptwriting triumphs of Round the Horne and The Frost Report to onscreen stardom in At Last the 1948 Show and his own hit TV series, Marty. His great friend, Mark Flanagan had it transcribed, with even the photos inserted where Feldman had noted where they should go. it is difficult not to read it without a degree of sadness now that Marty Feldman is no longer with us.

Niente: in un capitolo ha ancora il suo viso di nascita, alla fine del capitolo si accenna alla malattia, in quello dopo si parla già dei suoi occhi peculiari. Feldman went on to appear in films such as The Bed Sitting Room and Every Home Should Have One, the latter of which was one of the most popular comedies at the British box office in 1970. He was one of the most essential creative forces in British comedy embodied also by his close friends and creative partners from Beyond the Fringe (especially Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) and Monty Python (especially John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle). Ma non tutti sanno (me compresa) che Marty era un bravissimo autore inglese prima di "emigrare" ad Hollywood. When I was a kid, I used to think Monty Python, The Goon Show, Marty Feldman and even the Benny Hill Show was funny.

If you read his books in isolation, you'd believe that each of his subjects was the biggest mega- celebrity going! The much-loved Marty Feldman, TV and cinema's self-proclaimed "happy fool," died at the age of 48 in 1982; forty years later, this slim, amusing autobiography was uncovered.

Don’t praise absolutely everything, don’t try and force your view of Marty’s genius into the reader’s face, and please, please don’t believe every anecdote a comedian repeats on a chat show couch. I thought this would be an interesting story but it's gotten into tedious details of his television writing career that I'm not interested in.

Anyone more familiar with British television of the 50's and 60's would not skim, but for me there were too many names dropped that meant nothing, and too much focus on contract negotiations and other aspects of the business side of Marty's world at that point. So far the writing is unclear in that certain terms that are not in use lately aren't explained well.

This is a "no holds barred" account of his poor childhood right through to his, as he says, dream of a marriage to "the most beautiful girl ever" and his international stardom.The second series in 1969 was retitled It's Marty (this title being retained for the DVD release of the series). As with all good books, I found myself both wanting to read all night, and also wanting to delay finishing it. Feldman was a rebellious anarchist, who admitted to an overindulgence of drink and drugs and that, "being a misfit has always suited me. I think I just don't know enough about Marty Feldman and I am even less interested in English life to care to look up the many expressions in this book.