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If you know who Bob Mortimer is, “bananas” as a bingo square choice needs no explanation. Mortimer is a British comedian who has had a decades-long successful career performing live and on TV with his partner Vic Reeves (Jim Moir). My husband bought me Mortimer’s autobiography last year because we are both big fans of his from seeing him on British panel shows such as Would I Lie To You (WILTY) and on Taskmaster. Mortimer is a master storyteller— some of them true, some not, but the stories are always hilarious and completely bonkers. In this 2021 autobiography, Mortimer writes about his childhood, education, employment and the move to comedy while also describing a serious health scare in 2015 that led to open heart surgery and a difficult and painful recovery.
Mortimer’s childhood, while full of funny stories and adventures, actually contains some really painful experiences that had an impact on the rest of his life. When Mortimer was 7, his father died in a car crash, leaving his mother to raise him and his three older brothers. Mortimer describes feeling protective of his mother and worried about losing her, too. It must have been horrible for his mother to lose her husband, and in the same year her father and her home — in a fire that Bob started. That story has been told on WILTY and when Mortimer tells it on TV, it’s funny. And yet it’s not of course.
One of the surprising revelations of And Away was Mortimer’s description of his painful shyness and depression. As a child, he wanted friendships and to belong but he was so shy he found it difficult to achieve this. His abilities as a soccer player helped a bit, but he describes struggling even through adulthood with shyness. The depression is something that seems to have really come to the fore when he went away to university. Being away from his mother, his girlfriend and his very close friends was hard, and he came to realize that depression was something he was going to have to learn to deal with.
I was also surprised to learn about Mortimer’s employment as an attorney. I did know a little bit about this from one of his WILTY appearances, but Mortimer actually spent a number of years working as a probation officer and later on behalf of poor clients in London. Some of the stories he tells from his probation officer stint are wild! But it is also surprising to learn that Mortimer turned down a chance to study criminology at Cambridge (to his mother’s disappointment) and frequently worried often about disappointing his mother with his career choices. His move to comedy and public performance came about by sheer good luck — a chance meeting with an old friend that led to catching a comedy act by someone from his home town — a guy named Jim Moir who was using the stage name Vic Reeves. Vic was doing a cutting edge comedy revue that people either loved or hated. Bob loved it and began acting in it and writing. He and Jim/Vic became partners and still write together. They’ve had a lot of successful shows on TV over the years, and it looks like a bunch of them are available on YouTube or BritBox. I have to confess, I started watching Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out (the first success they had) and it was just goofy, not the laugh-out-loud funny I was hoping for. Gone Fishing, with his friend Paul Whitehouse, on the other hand, is a joy to watch.
If you are a fan of Mortimer’s, this is an interesting read, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, full of surprises. Mortimer comes across as a very down-to-earth guy who cares deeply about those close to him and who still marvels at his own good luck.
