CHRISTOPHER MATTHEW

FAMILY MATTERS: More from the Memoirs of Simon Crisp.

Hodder and Stoughton, 1987.

 

More than five years have elapsed since Simon Crisp last kept a daily account of his rich and varied life as an up-and-coming, often accident-prone, but always well-intentioned bachelor-about-town.  Now at last his marriage to Belinda and the imminent arrival of his first-born have urged him to take up his pen once again and afford us a fascinating glimpse into his new existence as husband, father and breadwinner.

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The birth itself; the agonies of choosing the ideal name for his son and heir; his uneasy relationship with the monthly nurse, Miss Thatcher and his struggle to come to terms with the complexities of family life in general; his sterling work as PR executive on the Botticelli Restaurant and Ski Time accounts; his startling performance in the Messiah at the Albert Hall; his surprise appointment as co-ordinator of the local Neighbourhood Watch Scheme; his single-handed and frustrated attempts to sell his poky flat in Brixton and move his family to a country house worthy of his new-found status; his disturbing chance reunion in the French Alps with his ex-flatmate and onetime girl friend, Jane Baker, and his unfortunate encounter with a fast-moving chairlift; his sudden emergence as a possible television star of the future…all this and more is chronicled with the incisive style and breathtaking honesty we have come to expect from the author of Diary of a Somebody, Loosely Engaged and The Crisp Report.