Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny: My Autobiography

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I always wondered if I was schizophrenic... Maybe just an overactive imagination. My mind likes to come up wi lots of thoughts and ideas, whether or no they're useful or make sense. I think that sort of thing can make you mental, depending on how severe it is and what kind of environment you're in. Fortunately I managed to find a place to put my kind of mind to good use. I bought it thinking it’d be alright and good for a few laughs but it was genuinely much better than I expected. Limmy joined YouTube on March 28, 2008, and uploaded his first video the following day. His earliest videos were largely short comedy skits and vlogs or showcasing musical remixes he had made using the program Ableton Live. This is a refreshing read/listen in that way - Almost every other book with mental health as a cornerstone would try and offer some kind of help or explanation (nothing wrong with that at all, mind you) but in this Limmy just exposes it for the strange and maddening experience it can be and how it has defined certain moments or periods in his life. That said, I don't wish to make this sound like this is a particularly heavy book to read in that sense - And that's the beauty of it. All this is told and explained with Limmy's humour and self depricating wit included with in other daft anecdotes.

I know several people with the same mix of terrible impulses and good intentions, charisma and anti-social solitude: folk whose adolescence lasted twenty years. They're the funniest people I know, by far. I don't know how class comes into it, but they're all working-class. Maybe middle-class people as strange as them direct it inward, rather than outward as comedy or violence. (They're also all Scots but that's a selection effect, I hope.) He is currently single. He is not dating anyone. We don't have much information about He's past relationship and any previous engaged. According to our Database, He has no children. Family I asked them if they wanted me to write about all that, plus some other stuff. Like being an alky. And my sexual problems. Stuff like that.The other reason Lloyd Cole didn't like the book was because he didn't find Limmy, as a person, "likable" and I have to disagree with him here. Clearly funny and displaying intelligence (of "some kind") Limmy also comes across here as a sensitive and thoughtful man. He speaks openly about his childood, his struggles with alcohol, his, often disastrous, relationships with women and his mental health issues. My impression was of an open, caring and, yes, likable person. So, you are wrong on that one, Lloyd.

After continuing his comedy work for several years, Limmy was commissioned by BBC Scotland to create his own sketch show, Limmy's Show. The show ran for three series and a Christmas special between 2010 and 2013 and won two BAFTA Scotland awards. Limmy has also engaged in various other pursuits, such as writing several books and performing explicit live shows.Because, as well as being a compelling first-person account of living with mental health issues, Surprisingly Down to Earth is, as the title promises, very funny. Uproariously, even. Limmy’s chatty, seemingly off-the-cuff patter marks him out as a natural storyteller, and the humour is easy and unforced, allowed to grow organically out of his skewed outlook on the world. And it’s genuinely interesting to see how Limmy’s varied talents, obsessions, hang-ups and life experiences coalesced into a successful career achieved on his own terms. it's not a completely encyclopedic look at his life, but does go from his first memories, to school, college/uni, jobs and relationships and some of the mishaps inbetween all along to even writing the book itself. I relate to a lot of the shit he says and thinks in a way I don’t with any other comedian, there’s something kinda unique about his style that is far more memorable and engaging somehow. Audiobook's worth it - the prose is very plain and his accent's strong but clear. Fans only, but you should be a fan.

It's about being strange in a normal, subclinical* way: intrusive thoughts, groundless anxiety, reduced affect display, auditory hallucination, mild paranoia, misanthropy, hysteroid dysphoria. It’s a lot more honest and open than most celebrities’, goes in depth on accounts of his own mental state (the ‘evil voice inside his head’ and questioning whether or not he is a psychopath). The lows like his girlfriend seeing him out drunk and just ignoring him as well as his general struggles with jobs/life are fascinating to hear. I could have guessed that he'd had a life like this from his characters; so much authentic idiocy, lunacy, awkwardness, pretension, and pettiness. Surprised that Dee-Dee is based on his own trippy blankness; Limmy's so sharp these days.

I know this review has been more about me than Limmy but one more thing; there's a chapter called Eccy where he heard his friends laughing horribly at him, not as feint paranoid thoughts but 100% absolutely real and right there beside him. Because his friends weren't in the house, he knew it wasn't real soon enough. Well the blood drained from my face listening to this because the exact same thing happened to me twenty-something years ago and it was a major trigger in my breakdown and took many years to realize those voices weren't real and no one said that horrible stuff. I'm grand now! but it took a lot more than twenty minutes to recover from that one I can tell you. They asked me to write a book about mental health, because I sometimes talk about my mental health in tweets and interviews, like suicidal thoughts and anxiety, and what I’ve done to try and deal with it.