2016's Best Comedy Books

From the evolution of sexual desire to Beyoncé, 2016 has been a special year for books by comedians

Feature by Ben Venables | 17 Nov 2016

Animal by Sara Pascoe

As panoramic as it is personal, Sara Pascoe's Animal is both an account of the evolutionary history of the female body and also an insightful, relatable and comedic memoir. It is everything sex education should be but often isn't: an understanding, empathetic and honest account of sexual desire in all its physicality and emotional complexity. Pascoe expresses vulnerability and strength in equal measure with plenty of wit throughout. Quite simply, Animal is a magnificent achievement. [Published by Faber, RRP £12.99]

Digging Up Mother by Doug Stanhope

The singularity of this book is nicely captured in the audio version where Stanhope shares narrating duties, has guests correct his version of events and comments on which passages required legal advice. The opening chapter recounts how he helped his mother on her deathbed, but this is really just a doorway into their entire relationship, which is a maternal bond and friendship like no other.

Bonnie was a recovering alcoholic, a hoarder and eccentric, yet however far Stanhope's journeys from job-to-job and town-to-town rising through the stand-up ranks took him, his mother always seems close and encouraging. At times it reads like a riotous road trip. Indeed, if the Beat Generation novels like On the Road weren't such self-indulgent drivel, they might have aspired to be something like as good as this memoir. Stanhope says it's a love story – it's a strange one for sure but it's a love story nonetheless. [Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, RRP £10.99]

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Sellout centres on the legacy of slavery in America. Comedically this sounds unpromising but Paul Beatty's satire on race relations occasionally offers a laugh-a-sentence, as its black protagonist and narrator finds himself on trial for reintroducing segregation to the local school and reinstating slavery.

The prose reads like stand-up routines, nicely influenced and with nods to Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Then, in the comic literary tradition The Sellout follows such masters as Jospeh Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. It won the Booker Prize, but comedy fans worrying this kind of illustrious prize normally goes to the sort of art that wouldn't know how to be funny, shouldn't be put off. [Published by Oneworld Publications, RRP £12.99]

Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle

While his first memoir Stalin Ate my Homework recounted his earliest years and received great acclaim, this second volume is perhaps of more interest to comedy fans. After all, Alexei Sayle was one of the pioneers of the Alternative Cabaret movement in the 1980s. It is less his history and more comedy history as the mother-in-law jokes and punch-down humour against minorities, still in vogue throughout the 1970s, gave way to politically engaged, surreal and subversive material. [Published by Bloomsbury, RRP £8.99]

What Would Beyoncé Do? by Luisa Omielan

The breakout 2012 debut show, which started life in a tiny room above a pub, this year returned to the Fringe in a room sixty times the capacity, courtesy of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The book version has much of Omielan's same aspirational call to arms of follow-your-dreams and take-no-shit. There's more room for detail in the book though and it offers insight and perspective into the peaks and valleys of being a centre stage comedian one moment and alone on a night bus the next. [Published by Century, RRP £14.99]