Sue Perkins ‘When I started writing this book, I went home to see if my mum had kept some of my old stuff. What I found was that she hadn’t kept some of it. She had kept all of it – every bus ticket, postcard, school report?’. Sadly a ‘recycling’ incident destroyed the bulk of her mother’s archive and Sue was left no choice but to write her story herself and the result is this remarkable autobiography. To read Spectacles is to embark on a turbulent and fascinating journey of Sue’s memories; from the side-splittingly funny to the profoundly moving. Of course many will delve into Spectacles for Bake Off gossip, and Sue does not disappoint. But, true to form, Sue is charming about everyone, describing Mary Berry as ‘one of the most extraordinary people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting’. Void of any inflated ego – throughout the book, Sue vehemently downplays her impressive catalogue of achievements, from her time as the President of the Cambridge Comedy Society and Footlights, to co-hosting 90s day time TV hit, Light Lunch, as all a bit of an accident. S 23 ue Perkins’ first book, Spectacles is a hilarious and heart-warming memoir that simultaneously delights and surprises. With unapologetic honesty, Sue reveals the ‘behind-the-scenes’ version of herself and offers an enlightening insight into her life, loves and losses. At the same time she is charmingly frank and describes the pain of infertility, heartbreak and her father’s cancer with delicate precision, and exposes her frustrations at the chauvinism and ignorance she has faced with faultless wit. There’s humour on every page but it’s not for the faint hearted either – she’s as open about her heartache as everything else and there are some chapters that shouldn’t be read in public!
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