New memoirs of writer DA Barham

The father of tragic comedy writer Debbie Barham has written a book chronicling her battle with anorexia.

Barham, who contributed topical one-liners for the likes of Clive Anderson, Angus Deayton, Graham Norton, Spitting Image and the News Quiz, died in 2003 at the age of 26, weighing less than five stone.

Now her father Peter has written a poignant memoir about losing a daughter so young, and the heartbreak fearing each morning he would find her dead.

Although Peter was an absentee father for most of Debbie’s life, she unexpectedly  turned up on his doorstep one day in 1999, when her illness had become acute.

‘My life’s a mess, all of it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know what else o do. Please help me out.’

She spent nine months at the Buckinghamshire house, struggling to overcome her anorexia, but always working, too, fuelled by obsessive amounts of black coffee. ‘She nearly died but then we pulled her back,’ her father said.

His new memoirs, entitled The Invisible Girl, also include much of the e-mail correspondence, and jokes, she exchanged with her professional contacts.

Debbie started writing for Radio 4 as a teenager – using her initials DA Barham because she thought it made her sound more like the Oxbridge males who dominated comedy writing  – and was acknowledged as one of the brightest young talents in comedy.

She also wrote for newspapers and magazines, and a radio sitcom, About A Dog, that was broadcast posthumously in 2004 after Graeme Garden completed the scripts.

The Invisible Girl: A Father's Moving Story of the Daughter He Lost will be published on February 1 by Harper. Click here to pre-order from Amazon.

Published: 8 Jan 2006