Learning to be a good boy

Why am I here?" asks Julian Clary. Does the world really need " an effeminate homosexual prone to making lewd and lascivious remarks"? The fact that he is still around more than 11 years after he found himself up to the elbows in trouble, having made an inappropriate (but very funny) joke about Norman Lamont on live TV at the British Comedy Awards, suggests a resounding "yes".

He adds to the gaiety of the nation and the story of his rise and fall and sequin-sprinkled comeback provides a surprisingly moral message: "There's a lot to be said for a clear mind and a fresh face. Drink the water, swallow the green tea, just say no."

Of course, he can say this now because, in his time, he has drunk, swallowed and taken a lot of other things. Bad behaviour makes good copy.

He opens with his remark about fisting the Chancellor of the Exchequer because it marks the moment when, although his career was at its height, his spirits were at their lowest. A bad house move - to Middleton Grove, N7 - a dead partner and a string of feckless lovers had left him on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His memoir reveals how he came to such a pretty pass.

The journey begins in Surbiton. His long-suffering father, a policeman, and his madcap mother, a probation officer, must have wondered what they had done to deserve such a louche and languid son. Naturally enough, the boy with "gross narcissistic tendencies" could only manage "mirror-writing" for several years.

Although named after a kindly monk, it was the "unholy" monks of St Benedict's, Ealing, who taught Julian "the rudiments of glamour, alternative living and brutality".

The eight "drinking, swearing oarsmen" he coxed, aged 12, at Kingston Rowing Club proved "better role models". Whereas the mother's boy was bullied at school - "You bring it on yourself, you know ..." one master tells him - he was accepted and protected by the burly jocks.

He also learned an "invaluable" lesson on those Saturdays: "How to get the best performance from my men."

There are hundreds of men in these pages and it seems that Clary has had sex with most of them. One hilarious, extended paragraph lists some of his pick-ups: "The Geordie scaffolder, the Irish pickpocket, the Greek Cypriot drinker, the bald Brighton leukaemia victim, the Chinese sex worker, the Australian blackmailer ..."

He may have started late at Goldsmiths College (with a wispy-bearded fellow student) but he made up for lost time. He puts down his escape from Aids - which killed Christopher, his longtime companion - to a severe case of anal warts.