Name: Matthew Jackson's review of Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny by Limmy
Item: Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny
Rating: 5
Author: Matthew Jackson

Limmy

The hysterical, shocking and incredibly intimate memoir from one of the most original and unique comedians alive today. From growing up in a run-down Glaswegian council estate to finding a certain renown as the writer, director, editor and star of his own multi-award-winning sketch show, nothing about Limmy's life has been conventional. From an early age, he always felt like the odd one out, as if he'd missed a crucial lesson in life that everyone else had attended. And that feeling of oddness has never left him. He's always stumbled down his own, peculiar path. From early run-ins with the police as a teenager, running away from a helicopter, to a drink addiction that saw him nearly piss away his life and career, Limmy has struggled with demons, good and bad, for as long as he can remember. As much as he'd love to kill them off, they are also the fuel for his own, very particular sense of humour which has made him one of the most respected and mercurial comic talents alive today. This is no run-of-the-mill comedian's memoir. There is real introspection here, a real quest to try and understand what it is that makes him tick, and why he does the self-destructive things he does. What emerges is a startling and captivating, and unsurprisingly very funny, story of a down-to-earth weirdo with an extraordinary talent, and who has the scars, mental and physical, to show for it.

Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny

Matthew Jackson

Gavin

Auto theft, fanny fright, incompetent but dogged self-harm, raving and tripping as self-medication, dole stupor, bail skipping, the death drive, pretend machismo, pretend homosexuality, alcoholism, Flash animation, BBC showrunner. Not very funny but very entertaining. (His shows are funny.) 

I could have guessed that he'd had a life like this from his characters; so much authentic idiocy, lunacy, awkwardness, pretension, and pettiness. Surprised that Dee-Dee is based on his own trippy blankness; Limmy's so sharp these days. 

He crosses into the middle class through IT, anxious about looking like the 'wee ned guy' in the office. And then into Design (a colony of the Art world, where a rough background's a bonus), and then to TV comedy, and then to streaming, where rawness and obliquity and patter means dollas. It's a nice story.

It's about being strange in a normal, subclinical* way: intrusive thoughts, groundless anxiety, reduced affect display, auditory hallucination, mild paranoia, misanthropy, hysteroid dysphoria. 

   I must sound like a fuckin robot tae you. But it's just the way I'm wired. I never felt sad about my mum dying.
 
 
I always wondered if I was schizophrenic... Maybe just an overactive imagination. My mind likes to come up wi lots of thoughts and ideas, whether or no they're useful or make sense. I think that sort of thing can make you mental, depending on how severe it is and what kind of environment you're in. Fortunately I managed to find a place to put my kind of mind to good use. 

 
The deep function of laughter is apparently that it allows play / boundary learning / questioning social norms. So to be a comedian, you have be a step past your society. (I doubt funniness is linear in weirdness though.) And Limmy is obviously out there. He regularly tweets about how much he misses drinking (which I've never seen an alcoholic do), and satirises the now-daily flamewars of the shouting classes by taking absurd and alternating stances on every issue (...) .

I know several people with the same mix of terrible impulses and good intentions, charisma and anti-social solitude: folk whose adolescence lasted twenty years. They're the funniest people I know, by far. I don't know how class comes into it, but they're all working-class. Maybe middle-class people as strange as them direct it inward, rather than outward as comedy or violence. (They're also all Scots but that's a selection effect, I hope.) 

Audiobook's worth it - the prose is very plain and his accent's strong but clear. Fans only, but you should be a fan.

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* There are also dozens of suicidal episodes though.

Matthew Jackson &
Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny by Limmy

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Matthew Jackson &Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny by Limmy

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Matthew Jackson &
Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny by Limmy