Book – A Simples Life
Author – Aleksandr Orlov
Year – 2010
Genre – Autobiography/Comedy (both are loose terms)
Pages – 127
Bought for me by my Mum and Dad
See if you can see where my problem is with this book. It is an autobiography. But it is not just a normal autobiography, it is an autobiography of a meerkat. But it is not just an autobiography of a meerkat, it is an autobiography of a fictional meerkat. But it is not just an autobiography of a fictional meerkat, but it is an autobiography of a fictional meerkat who is the mascot of an insurance company*.
Yes, Aleksandr Orlov is that meerkat off of the comparethemarket.com adverts. Somehow, they appear to have become rather popular, and there is an incredible amount of merchandise based around this meerkat in a cravat. I don’t particularly get it – I don’t even like the adverts – but when I received this book for Christmas, I thought I should give it a shot.
And I hated it. It has been suggested to me by friends who also read a lot and like some classic literature, that it is quite funny, and as it has no pretensions of being anything other than a silly merchandising read, it shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Unfortunately, it really isn’t funny – unless over a hundred pages of mispronouncing words and thinking of food based puns (‘mushy fleas’ anyone? No?) is the kind of thing that gets you rolling in the aisles. And even though it is not claiming to be the latest addition to the Bronte legacy, that doesn’t mean that it should get away with being crap.
If you are a fan of someone, then you can do worse than read their autobiography, no matter how dull a celeb other people may think they are, or how ghostwritten their book is. If you are enough of a fan of a fake meerkat that you were clamouring for his life story, then you really, really need to sort yourself out.
2/10 (It is still better than Goldust’s autobiography)
* As Pat quite rightly pointed out to me, Aleksandr Orlov is not the mascot of an insurance company, but the mascot of a meerkat comparison service which is regularly mistaken for an insurance company. However, following this train of thought involves buying into the whole concept of this bloody meerkat actually existing, which I pretty much refuse to do.