Entertainment Comedy

Step behind the curtain of one of television’s most iconic shows with Live from New York! Five Decades of Laughs, Legends, and Lobster Claws. This unauthorized, unhinged, and unapologetic deep dive into Saturday Night Live takes you on a wild ride through 50 years of comedy chaos, legendary sketches, and the stars who made it all happen. From Chevy Chase’s pratfalls to Eddie Murphy’s Gumby, from “More Cowbell” to Kate McKinnon’s alien-abducting RBG, this book is your backstage pass to the laughter, drama, and occasional cocaine-fueled meltdowns that defined SNL.

Born in Chicago, February 14, 1894, Benjamin Kubelsky would later become known as Jack Benny. As a boy, he was encouraged by his Jewish immigrant parents from Poland to become a concert violinist. He learned to play quite well and hit the vaudeville stage, where he played popular songs and honed a suave-but-fragile personality, telling self-deprecating jokes. Benny guested on the "Ed Sullivan" radio show March 19, 1932 and was an instant success.

Labor Day, 1969: Two recent college graduates move to New York to edit a new magazine called the National Lampoon. Over the next decade, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, along with a loose amalgamation of fellow satirists such as Michael O’Donoghue and P. J. O’Rourke, popularized a smart, caustic, ironic brand of humor that has become the dominant voice of American comedy. Ranging from sophisticated political satire to broad raunchy jokes, the National Lampoon introduced iconoclasm to the mainstream, selling millions of copies to an audience both large and devoted.

Tumbling from one love entanglement to another, 30-something teacher Izzy Comyn has a predilection for inappropriate men. Over the three hilarious series of Up the Garden Path, Izzy, played by Imelda Staunton, deals with the complicated ups and downs of her attempts to find true love.

John Byner is a man of many voices and characters, from impersonating the slow, rolling gait and speech of John Wayne, to lending his voice to The Ant and the Aardvark cartoons. His dead-on impersonations, as well as his unique talents as a character actor, have put him on the small screen in peoples' homes, the big screen in theaters, and no screen on Broadway. This memoir is the best and funniest moments of his life, career, and relationships with some of the biggest names in entertainment, both on and off the screen.

In Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means - or doesn’t - to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected president of the United States purely on showmanship.

Celebrating twenty years since her bestselling debut autobiography, Being Jordan, and a stellar thirty-year career, This is Me is Katie Price as you've never seen her before - honest and reflective, Katie explores the incredible highs and devastating lows of her life and turbulent career, as well as the journey she's been on to get to where she is today.

From the break-out star of BuzzFeed and the People's Choice Award-winning comedian comes a collection of hilariously anguished essays chronicling awful moments from his life so far, the humiliations of being an adult, and other little indignities. Matt Bellassai has no idea what he's doing. Well, to be fair, he did become semi-Internet famous by getting drunk at work, making him a socially-acceptable - nay - professional alcoholic. He's got some things figured out. But the rest is all just a terrible, disgusting mess.

In this brand-new memoir, Rylan invites us deeper into his world to reflect on all the things he's learnt from a decade in the limelight, whilst also pulling back the curtain on his personal journey. Covering everything from fame and celebrity to mental health and identity, family and relationships to his love of reality TV, he recounts his life lessons with humour, candour and a huge amount of heart. From the moments that have shaped him to the mistakes that have made him, and the unusual pastimes that have obsessed him along the way.

Now cohost of Fox's The Real and SiriusXM's Café Mocha, Loni Love hasn't taken the typical path to becoming America's favorite straight-talking girlfriend and comedian. She was not the child of Hollywood legends and she never wore a size 00. Rather, she grew up in housing projects in Detroit, more worried about affording her next meal than going on a diet.

Beyond memoir, this guidebook offers practical advice on everything from "How to Be the Black Friend" to "How to Be the (Next) Black President" to "How to Celebrate Black History Month". This is a humorous, intelligent, and audacious guide that challenges and satirizes the so-called experts, purists, and racists who purport to speak for all Black people. With honest storytelling and biting wit, Baratunde plots a path not just to blackness, but one open to anyone interested in simply "how to be".

From Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the youngest comedy writers ever for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and masterminds behind the viral 2018 Yale graduation speech, comes a hilarious collection of short stories taking on coming-of-age, memes, sex, politics, relationships, and Goop, with satire, self-deprecation, and utter irreverence.

I’ve been a professional actor since the precocious age of 12. When I was five, I decided that there could not possibly be any better job than playing and making people laugh. That became my path, and although I’m not a household name, I’ve been able to play and make people laugh most of my life - and somehow pay the bills in the process. “Not bad”, says I.

A. E. Hotchner first met Paul Newman in 1955 when the virtually unknown actor assumed the lead role in Hotchner’s first television play, based on an Ernest Hemingway story. The project elevated both men from relative obscurity to recognition and began a close and trusted friendship that lasted until Newman’s death in 2008.

Because no one will write an unauthorized biography about Emmy-winning actor and comedian Chris Elliott, he has done it himself. Listener, you’re hereby warned that much of this book will be disturbing. The Guy Under the Sheets is a behind-the-scenes memoir so personal, so provocative, that Elliott nearly sued himself to halt publication: The most shocking revelation, corroborated by numerous unnamed sources, is that Elliott is not the absurdist comedian that Rolling Stone once called "a genius". In fact, he’s a slightly dim-witted no-talent from a celebrity family.

When Southern belle Ellie McBride moves her twins from Vertigo, Tennessee to New York City, they wouldn't dream of leaving behind the family pig, Rumpy. But the posh hotel where Ellie has found work (and living space) has "No Pets" writ large on its portal.

Nicholas Parsons was the host of the Just a Minute for nearly 52 years - from its first broadcast on 22nd December 1967 until his last show on 23rd September 2019, aged 96. He was a comedy 'straight man', West End actor, radio personality, game-show presenter, chat-show host, quiz master supreme and larger-than-life stage superstar. Here we celebrate his life and work with a series of programmes compered by Paul Merton, plus Series 85 of Just a Minute - his final series.

Dennis Miller is back, and he means to shake the nation by its lapels. Miller respects no boundaries. Whether the subject is dope-addled baseball players who can no longer swing their bats, do-nothing politicians who devote their careers to creating meaningful sound bites, or the nation's resigned acceptance of violence as a way of American life, these thematically arranged monologues are funny and angry. More significantly, they shatter the conventions of comedy by simultaneously making us laugh, think, and seethe.

In What Would Susie Say?, Susie Essman sheds the crasser layers to reveal how she went from an anxiety-ridden, struggling stand-up comic to being one of the funniest women on television, playing Susie Greene on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Comedy, Tragedy, Therapy. Simon Amstell did his first stand-up gig at the age of 13. His parents had just divorced, and puberty was confusing. Trying to be funny solved everything. Read by Simon Amstell, and interspersed with footage from his stand-up tours, HELP is the hilarious and heartbreaking account of Simon's ongoing compulsion to reveal his entire self onstage. To tell the truth so it can't hurt him anymore. Loneliness, anxiety, depression - this book has it all. And more.