Soupy Twists!: The Full Official Story of the Sophisticated Silliness of Fry and Laurie

Jem Roberts

Sep 2018 · Unbound Publishing

About this ebook

This first ever, officially authorised biography of Fry & Laurie takes us on their journey from insecure Footlighters to international comedy heroes. It is the tale of a true friendship, a deep affection between two very funny men which has long been reflected back from an adoring public.

Jem Roberts, acclaimed chronicler of Blackadder and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, covers everything from the excitement of being the first Perrier Award winners with The Cellar Tapes to the terrors of performing on Saturday Live, the collaborative warfare of Blackadder and the ultimate depiction of Wodehouse’s most inimitable characters, Jeeves & Wooster. Beyond this, the trials and tribulations of their remarkable subsequent separate career paths, from QI to House, will be explored for the first time.

With tantalising, never-before-seen titbits from the A Bit of Fry & Laurie archive, and interviews with Emma Thompson, Richard Curtis, John Lloyd and more, this history of Fry & Laurie is an overdue celebration, paying tribute to a legacy of laughter from one of the funniest double acts of all time.

About the author

Jem Roberts was born in Ludlow in 1978, gained his first professional writing gig as a teenage games journalist, and has over twenty years of magazine toil under his belt. As a comedy performer, he has inflicted his noises on audiences from Edinburgh to Glastonbury Festival, solo and with his troupe, The Unrelated Family. His love of I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue led to his first officially authorised book book, The Clue Bible, in 2009, and a lifetime's obsession meant that the ultimate guide to Blackadder had to follow, with 2012's The True History of the Black Adder. In 2014, he became the official biographer of Douglas Adams, with The Frood marking his third release from Preface Publishing. Soupy Twists! is his fourth work of comedy history. Also published by Unbound in 2018 is Tales of Britain, the first British folktale treaty in over thirty years, which Roberts performs all over the UK.

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