The Celebrity Diaries

Today, 5th October marks the birthday of Rene Zellweger – star of the 2 broadly celebrated Bridget Jones films: "Bridget Jones’ diary" and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason". What more of an opportunity could Paperstone need in launching a celebration of famous and humorous diaries, diarists and diarisations?

1. "Diary of a Nobody", (Grossmith, W and G) is where the diary humour all began. First published by Punch magazine towards the end of the 19th Century, it follows the endearing, first person account of Charles Pooter – a middle class Londoner battling to rise above his social station and failing with erring consistency. Very much laid the foundation on which later, quintessential British humour in the modern day was built (Fawlty Towers, Ricky Gervais’ The Office).

2. Adrian Mole (Townsend, S) very much picked up from where Mr. Pooter left off, although about 100 years on and set further north in the Midlands. Targeted at a much younger, adolescent audience Adrian recounts his growing pains through a seemingly endless battle with puberty, his family and life in general. Such personal and humorous writing can only have had an influence on the creation of more modern "coming of age" art such as "The Inbetweeners". Adrian very much lives on following a series of 8 books thoughout his life from 1982 – 2009, so we can all grow old with him and continue to enjoy his putting of pen to Paper.

3. Diaries 1969-1979 (Palin, M) takes the reader on a fantastic, whistlestop tour of the life of Michael Palin from Python to Peking. And what a genuinely nice chap Palin is. He doesn’t do voiceovers for commercial enterprises (unlike some of the Monty Python crew) and strongly disliked being on the show "Saturday Night Live" following a mix up with a sketch involving him stuffing animals down his trousers. Suffice to say, it wasn’t taken in the way it was intended by the animals. I seem to remember a cat being involved. Hurrah for the diary, and Happy Birthday to Ms. Jones from all of us at Paperstone.