Mystery solved...
Arthur Smith was festival's secret guest
Arthur Smith gave the first public reading of his forthcoming autobiography, My Name Is Daphne Fairfax, at the Leicester Comedy Festival yesterday.The Grumpy Old Men star was the mystery guest at the festival’s ‘secret show’, billed as ‘a real coup.. something exclusive and very, very special’.
Smith, 54, has spent two years writing the memoirs, which take their title from his long-standing opening line: ‘Hello, my name is Arthur Smith, unless there’s anyone in from Streatham tax office, in which case my name is Daphne Fairax.’
In Leicester, Smith read extracts covering schoolboy memories, his time performing revue at the Edinburgh Fringe and his discovery of alternative comedy that gave him the incentive to abandon that style, his time hosting the ill-fated BBC variety show Paramount City and the pancreatitis that almost killed him.
The book will be published by Hutchinson on May 7. Click here to preorder it from Amazon.
Published: 10 Feb 2009
