Skinned up

So, I got some help resisting jet lag and hopefully getting my mental clock in order for Magnum's wedding by reading Rupert Everett's Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins until 3 last night. I'd never have bought it, my boss lent it to me, and I'd say that's not the sort of thing I generally enjoy, but if it reminds me of anything it reminds me of With Nails, Richard E. Grant's With Nails, which I also enjoyed. But call me crazy (I'd call myself 'glowing') - I think both With Nails and Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins are both works of, errrrrm, literature - it's hard to admit that because both of them have big sections about Madonna.

Also hard to admit is that I like Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins rather better, despite my 12 year old crush on Grant. It was funny and merciless to all concerned, the writer too. I don't know how many people stopped speaking to Grant after With Nails but I can imagine a fair number stopped speaking to Everett with his book. But that could be just the construction, the structure that he used -clear story arc, a sort of defacto character development that was none the less obvious for being approached somewhat indirectly - rabidly ambitious boy gets most of what he wants, gets annoyed by it, ages, and quits being a certain kind of celebrity. One nearly cheers for him at the end, though he makes himself sound like a dreadful asshole - of course, he does write about liking Graham Greene and marijuana so there'd be worse people to sit beside at dinner.

Aside from all that it's enjoyable as a book, like With Nails but even more so. Okay. The fact Madonna is presently ending the marriage that Everett deconstructed in the book and things like that add a voyeuristic interest. But I found the best bits weren't the name dropping bits, which were less than half the total - the best bits were really autobiographical or about important people to him in more general terms - and it all came out very well.