My Name is Daphne Fairfax
Arthur Smith
'My name is Arthur Smith, unless there's anybody here from the Streatham tax office. In which case, I'm Daphne Fairfax.' This is a line Arthur has used at a thousand different stand-up gigs.
In fact, he is neither Daphne or Arthur. Family and old friends know him as Brian.
Arthur Smith is best known as a comedian, a broadcaster and an opening bat for Grumpy Old Men. But he has also been a West End playwright (his plays include An Evening with Gary Lineker), an English teacher, a failed rock star, a busker, a road sweeper and a bombsite boy in post-war Bermondsey.
Smith was one of the 'alternative comedians' who shook up light entertainment in the eighties and remains a legend at the Edinburgh Festival fringe where he has been fêted and arrested. His rumbustuous drinking years ended in Intensive Care where he narrowly survived an attack of acute pancreatitis. He gave up drink and got diabetes but continues to perform, write and act in peculiar ways and delight his fans.
This memoir encompasses a range of extraordinary, funny and often moving experiences by a unique and individual commentator on the peculiarities of modern society.
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About Arthur Smith
Reviews for My Name is Daphne Fairfax
Observer
This droll and wise comedian's testament almost ends with a joke-free bout of acute necrotising pancreatisis (like "a mad rodent inside me"). As this book's existence hints, Arthur Smith - Daphne Fairfax, if you're from the tax office - survived, the better to redeem the clapped-out name of "alternative" comedy with a memoir that doubles as an acute slice of social history. Childhood with Syd and Hazel in London's tatty south merges HG Wells with Carry On.... UEA student years and Parisian scrapes lead into the stand-up heyday with mates such as Malcolm Hardee, "a debauched Eric Morecambe". Smith's tone of mordant pathos touches as much as it tickles. Greenwich, Balham, Bermondsey - be proud of him.
Independent