LOOK WHO IT IS! MY STORY, Alan Carr, Harper Collins, £18.99

HE did a New Year's Eve show at Nottingham's Just The Tonic which proved to be a baptism of fire. Not only did his set bomb, he suffered a topless streaker and chants of "You throw like a girl!" He ended up in tears when promoter Darrell Martin chastised him for handing out the party poppers before midnight, thus ruining Ed Byrne's slot. Still it earned him £300.

It's one of the tales in the comedian's premature autobiography that ends just as it begins with The Friday Night Project, the Channel 4 show that made Alan Carr pretty much a household name.

Born in Dorset but raised in Northampton, Carr, as is well documented in his own live shows, is the son of football manager – whose grandson played for West Brom and Newcastle – who legged it to London to study drama. There he made his stand-up debut in a pub in 1997 but it was after relocating to Manchester that he was spotted by Johnny Vegas' agent coming second to Justin Moorhouse in the city's annual Citylife stand-up competition.

Elsewhere there are tales of his meeting with Muhammad Ali, travels abroad with a blind friend, seeing an old school mate on the Tube who'd had a sex change and summer jobs attending to toilets, degreasing gearboxes and delivering conservatories.

Unlike most hastily released celeb autobiographies Carr has made an effort and written like he's crafting a set. Guffaws aplenty.

SIMON WILSON