The customary, annual circus of celebrity autobiographies is cranking up already, as the first signs of sparkly window dressing in the shops appear and even the miniscule pharmacy next to our doctors’ surgery has sprouted some tinsel along its dusty shelving-that is, unless it has been left over from last year?

                First out of the traps are a couple of football managers, following up their published memoirs by appearing on an overabundance of talk shows and magazine programmes, promising plenty of ‘kiss and tell’ revelations. You can’t blame them. Presumably in retirement they need every penny they can get to keep them in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. The level of writing competence will be adequate, since they will have engaged the services of ghost writers, and in any case I suppose their readership will not be purchasing their books for their literary qualities, characterisation, plotlines, descriptions, imagery or philosophical debate. No, the punters will be interested in two things only-whether they dish the dirt-and what the dirt is.

                Then there are actors, pop stars, footballers, ‘presenters’ and comedians. I used to feel it incongruous for pop singers or models barely into their twenties to pen [or have someone pen] ‘My Story’ but of course then I realised it is the ultimate gravy train. In another couple of years, having become addicted to some substance, had a couple of stints in The Priory, got married, had an affair or two, come out, been arrested and done community service the material is all set for ‘My Story-the Next Chapter’. Look at Katie Price. She has created an entire industry from living her orchestrated life in the public eye, thus generating enough story lineage for a library full of autobiographies.

                If I appear to be less than enamoured of celebrity autobiographies then it is true. In fact the biography is not a favourite genre of mine at all. Unlike the unlovely Noel Gallagher I’m a great fiction fan. Has Noel any plans to publish his own memoirs? If he has not already done so, I’m betting it will happen at some stage. I’m also willing to wager it will contain a fair portion of fiction, a genre that Noel abhors.

                I do make the odd exception to my biography reading rule. Jennifer Saunders has been reading her own on the radio; fresh, entertaining and funny. In contrast, Dawn French’s offering [doled out to my book club-hence not a choice] came across as self congratulatory, inflated and at times, resentful.

                If there is a redeeming feature about the eruption of Christmas biogs it is that they are unaccountably popular [or why would there be so many on the shelves of WH Smith and Waterstone’s], which means that a great many people pick up a book who would otherwise be reading nothing more than The Daily Mail or the numbers on their lottery tickets; that is, if they are read? They do, after all, tend to include a plethora of glossy photographs…