I wrote a book today, oh boy

My new book, Fine, is out today. It's the third book I'm in this year, but my first novel. My first ever novel. 

In the unboxing video I made - yeah, I make unboxing videos, so kill me with rocks - I mentioned that Kenneth Williams was a year younger than I am now when he made his last Carry On film, the execrable Carry On Emannuelle. He didn't retire after that: he did An Audience With...He did the Bloo Loo adverts and Willow the Wisp. He wrote Acid Drops, Back Drops (whose title I don't get) Just Williams (better), I Only Have to Close My Eyes, which appears to be a children's book. He did a recording of Monkey, Arthur Waley's translation of Journey to the West, which I fear might be a bit of its time. 

He'd played the Dauphin in St Joan, and was in Orson Welles' London production of Moby Dick - Rehearsed. He was a mainstay of Hancock's Half Hour and Round the Horne, two of the greatest comic concoctions of the mid 20th Century. They'd make you forget the ration. And, of course, he was in more Carry On films than anyone else - 26 of the buggers - paid a fee of £5000 in 1958 and still earning £5000 twenty years later. 

He'd done all these incredible things - I haven't even mentioned Captain Zepp - yet he considered himself a failure. He felt he'd betrayed his talent. He'd done this remarkable work and none of it meant anything to him. His last screen appearance saw him drop his winceyettes and air his 52 year old bum to an aghast Joan Sims - I doubt it was the first time she'd seen it - while Kenny Lynch sang a lazy Jive Talkin' knock off. The Carry Ons, at least, were visible diminishing returns. But there was so much more to be proud of he couldn't see. That's the nature of depression. 

And while he'd done all that, I produced a single novel. 

Bloody hell. The word Fine looks like denial here...

But, Ken, it's a pretty good novel. It's funny and sad and clever and desperate and scored through with a heap spoon of vulgarity. You'd have loved it, in fact. It's very you. It took a long time to write and, really, I couldn't have done it before I did it. It takes a long time to teach yourself to write. Like, from scratch. 

I'm writing another novel. In fact I'm writing three. It's been a long run up, but here I am. Typing. Making it all up.