Customer Reviews

Thin He Was and Filthy-Haired

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bobbie, I am extremely annoyed that a middle-class bastard such as yourself should write a book this good, which is why I am trying to reduce your average star rating. And subtitling it Memoirs of a Bad Boy? Everyone knows I'm the bad boy of the Red Dwarf cast and you're just an overprivileged middle-class whiner. Everyone: read my books instead! They're honestly quite good!

For fans of Red Dwarf or Junkyard Wars, the early years of Robert Llewellyn's life will leave some wondering "How did he ever wind up as an actor?", and for others it will all make sense. This wonderfully written auto-biography invites us into the '70's world of sexual self-awareness, upper-class prejudices, free-spirited hippies, silver polishing, party crashing, toast, weed, and geodesic domes.

Mr. Llewellyn manages to keep the reader trans-fixed from beginning to end. His "tell it as it is" writing mixed with copious amounts of humour makes for some embarrassing moments if you're reading this in public places.

I highly recommend this book for true Llewellyn fans. It's a very revealing look into his youth and his background. From cartoonist to convict, from visionary to drag queen. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll laugh some more, but all through-out the book you'll never stop wondering "this guy is Kryten?!"

"Thin He Was and Filthy-Haired", "Man in the Rubber Mask", "Man on Platform 5", "Punchbag", and "Sudden Wealth". An impressive collection of truly wonderful works.

I love Mr Llewellyns books. "Rubber mask", "Punchbag", "Platform 5"- they are all first rate. I finished reading "Thin he was..." his teenage autobiography last night and I have to say its my favourite so far. The title is derived rather arcanely from a quote about aliens- "Dark they were and golden eyed".

The novel tells the story of Rob(the cartoonist) who in his teens went ever so slightly off the rails. He lives in a geodist dome, smokes weed and crashes Oxford balls in drag. A fantasy writer called Duncan finds Robs rebellious behavoiur extremely rich and makes a pass at him. Young Rob is flattered, but his hormones are too much raging for attractive females. He is also desparetly seeking a direction in life. His romantic and anarchic ideals seem to have no place in "The System".

Unlike anything else Llewellyn has written, this storys innocence goes straight to the soul. He perfectly captures the sights and sounds of the time and his characterisation is utterly charming. At one point he mentions having never read "Catcher in the rye". This is interesting because his book has a similar engaging narritive with the wild excitment of "On the road".

Being of the same generation as Bob I shook my head knowingly between outbursts of hysterical laughter, whilst reading the book in only three days. Apart from being relieved to learn I'm not the only bloke whose early sexual experiments were about as successful as Kryten's attempts to tell lies, I also shared his frustrations in coming to terms with Straights and their bread-head world. But far from being self-indulgent nostalgia this book captures those years in our lives when events seemed to sweep us along by their own momentum. In the company of people who likewise challenge the secure world around them, Bob finds himself caght up in a conflict between easy middle class existence and trying to be a working class revolusionary. The gate crashing of the Oxford Ball is perhaps the hardest bit to believe, but any creative license is well justified. I liked the fact that he adds an update as to the present whereabouts of the main characters at the end of the book. To be honest they mostly come across as a better crowd than the tossers I used to knock around with and now avoid like one of Rimmer's lectures on the Hammond Organ.