Adventures of an ordinary boy in a celebrity world

That's Me in the Corner

Self-deprecating tale of an ordinary man's life in the celebrity bear pit - from the Sunday Times-bestselling author

Collins' easygoing charm is hard to resist - a welcome visitor into any home that houses a Nick Hornby or a Tony Parsons

All recounted in a wittily self-deprecating style. As good an insight into magazine life as you'll get

It's Almost Famous for grown-ups. Witty music journo Collins describes a life of rubbing shoulders with the stars

A punchy self-help book for aspiring journalists

Andrew Collins is a writer and broadcaster, whose early career at the NME and Q led him to Radio 1, Radio 4 and 6 Music. He is Film Editor of Radio Times, the author of three memoirs, co-writer of BBC sitcoms Grass and Not Going Out, and the host of Saturday Night at the Movies on Classic FM.

Fast approaching his fortieth birthday, Andrew is cornered at a family gathering by the nine-year-old son of his brother-in-law's sister. Having seen him as a talking head on TV, the boy asks, 'What are you?' It is a question so frank and simple that Andrew doesn't have an immediate answer to hand. 
 
So, with hilarious self-deprecation, he sets out to retrace how he got to where he is today. Seventeen precarious jobs in seventeen years: from trolley collector at Sainsbury's to high-flying film critic sipping cocktails with Will Smith and Jerry Bruckheimer on a yacht in Cannes. This is Andrew's tale of rubbing shoulders with the world's biggest stars: pissing off Christini Ricci, having his hairstyle mocked by Noel Gallagher, trying not to wake Clive James from his afternoon nap, having his apple pie eaten by Bob Geldof, and somehow stumbling into the next dream job. 
 
Along the way, he's been the world's worst gossip columnist, an almost-hip young gunslinger at the NME, a Radio 1 DJ (enduring a hellish Radio 1 roadshow in a car park in Birmingham), an ITV presenter, EastEnders scriptwriter, ghost writer for a major TV personality and much, much more. It charts a world of hedonism, mundanity, towering egos, shallow idiocy and occasional moments of mind-blowing joy. And, of course, being sent shit in a box.

My Difficult 80s

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

Does for the adolescent and student experience what Where Did It All Go Right? did for childhood

It's perceptive, moving and excruciatingly funny. A treasure

Collins' easygoing charm is hard to resist. A welcome visitor into any home that houses a Nick Hornby or a Tony Parsons

Beautifully observed, cleverly narrated and very readable, it's like being part of the great unwashed again

Entertaining and surprisingly familiar read ... Even for those of us who were still in pre-school at the time, the joys and lows are all given an added relevance via the author's emulation of Nick Hornby's self-deprecating humour. Like High Fidelity, if it had been written by a teenage Rob Fleming

'Higher education comes at exactly the right time: in the twilight of your teens, you're just starting to coagulate as a human being, to pull away from parental influence and find your own feet. What better than three years in which to explore the inner you, establish a feasible worldview, and maybe get on Blockbusters.' 
 
After an idyllic provincial 1970s childhood, the 1980s took Andrew Collins to London, art school and the classic student experience. Crimping his hair, casting aside his socks and sporting fingerless gloves, he became Andy Kollins: purveyor of awful poetry; disciple of moany music, and wannabe political activist. What follows is a universal tale of trainee hedonism, girl trouble, wasted grants and begging letters to parents. 
 
A synth-soundtracked rite of passage that's often painfully funny, it traces one teenager's metamorphosis from sheltered suburban innocent to semi-mature metropolitan male through the pretensions and confusions of trying to stand alone for the first time in your own kung fu pumps in a big bad city.

Growing Up Normal in the 70s

Where Did It All Go Right?

A feel-good childhood memoir for the Friends Reunited generation

This is a book to indulge in, the literary equivalent of Horlicks before bed, guaranteed to leave you feeling all warm inside

A lovely tongue-in-cheek memoir...a wonderful antidote to all those tales of childhood woe pouring from the presses; read and enjoy

A welcome visitor into any home that houses a Nick Hornby or a Tony Parsons.

An unashamed nostalgia fest . . . comic gold.

Warm moments . . . thanks to the author's grasp of the anecdote.

Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on well with his brother and sister and none of his friends drowned in a canal. He has never stayed overnight in a hospital and has no emotional scars from his upbringing, except a slight lingering resentment that Anita Barker once mocked the stabilisers on his bike. Where Did It All Go Right? is a jealous memoir written by someone who occasionally wishes life had dealt him a few more juicy marketable blows. The author delves back into his first 18 years in search of something - anything - that might have left him deeply and irreparably damaged. With tales of bikes, telly, sweets, good health, domestic harmony and happy holidays, Andrew aims to bring a little hope to all those out there living with the emotional after-effects of a really nice childhood. Andrew Collins kept a diary from the age of five, so he really can remember what he had for tea everyday and what he did at school, excerpts from his diary run throughout the book and it is this detail which makes his story so compelling.

Andrew Collins

Still Suitable for Miners

'Love me or hate me. It's a great read’ - Billy Bragg 
 
 He was a punk. He was a soldier. He was a flag-waver for the Labour Party and the miners. He is Billy Bragg, passionate protest folk singer and tireless promoter of political and humanitarian causes around the world. 
 
 His life encapsulates so much about his generation: born in the late ’50s, passions forged by punk, politics shaped by Thatcherism, career inspired by engagement, hope provided by the end of the Cold War and ideology galvanised by what he sees as a ‘post-ideological’ twenty-first century. He adapts to survive: serious about compassion and accountability, he likes a laugh too, and has never forgotten where he comes from. 
 
Still Suitable for Miners is the official Billy Bragg story, tracing his life, family and career at close range from Barking to the present day. This 20th anniversary edition has been updated to include the rise of Corbyn, the unfolding of Brexit, Billy’s reclamation of skiffle and his overtures into Americana.

Andrew Collins

Praise for Billy Bragg

Love me or hate me. It's a great read.

Books by Andrew Collins

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