Review: Going on the Turn

Going Round the Bend by Danny Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a friend to whom nothing ordinary has ever happened. His life seems to be full of spur of the moment, sometimes ill-advised, decisions that lead to situations which, at least as he tells them, reduce the listener to tears of laughter. His gift is that he tells these stories in great detail and, despite meandering from one situation to the next, seemingly unconnected, he eventually gets back to the original point and always with a killer punchline. Danny Baker shares this gift.

‘Going on the Turn’ is the third volume of Danny Baker’s autobiography and essentially takes his story from the mid-nineties until late 2012, with many flashbacks. Like in the previous volumes, Baker discusses the absurd and coincidental as his stories crash into each other as it hurtles along at a frantic, and extremely entertaining, pace. The book contains some of his funniest tales - throwing his records in a skip; meeting David Bowie; NOT meeting David Bowie; NOT smoking cannabis - and also the harrowing, honest description of his cancer treatment in 2012. But even the latter is full of wit and humour as is the chapter about his father’s death.

If you like Danny Baker, and I do, then the only thing better than reading his latest memoir is to listen to him read it in the audiobook version. And then go straight to his vitriolic, chaotic and triumphant final show for BBC Radio London following his sacking by homogenising pen-pushers (It’s still on youtube).

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