Jon Richardson – författare

‘I loved Jon’s book. It’s even better than the real thing because you can’t hear his voice.’ Michael McIntyreA control freak looks for love (women who leave wet teaspoons in sugar bowls need not apply).‘I haven’t woken up with a cup of tea by the bed for seven years. It seems such a small thing but it’s one of a thousand things I miss about having someone around to take care of me. I have spent my entire adult life getting things the way I want them and all I want now is someone to give it all up for.’Is your filing faultless? Your CDs, apostrophes, cutlery all in the right places? Can you eat a biscuit in the correct way? Then Jon Richardson (single for seven years and counting) could be your ideal man…Living alone in a one bedroom flat in Swindon, Jon has had far too much time on his hands to think. In fact to obsess. About almost everything. Jon’s obssessive compulsive personality disorder has seen him arrange the coins in his pockets in ascending size and colour code his bookshelves. It takes him less than 90 seconds to locate a receipt for a pair of shoes he bought in 1997. Over to the filing cabinet and R for receipts, S for shoes.But Jon doesn’t want to be like this, in fact he would quite like to share his life with someone. But who could that someone be? Someone like himself, a quarrelsome perfectionist only with breasts and less body hair? Absolutely not. But who exactly is Jon looking for and where will he find her? Faced with a loveless future filled with his own peculiar quirks and perfectionism, Jon sets about his search for The One. The question is, will he mind her keeping the knives to the left of the forks in the cutlery drawer or organising the CDs by genre and not alphabetically?

'Put very simply, the details of my life could be boiled down to "boy dreams of being a comedian and then becomes one", so in a basic sense everything has gone according to plan. Item number one on the lifetime to-do list has been well and truly ticked off. 'But, of course, things are never that simple, because nobody becomes a comic without some degree of "character building" along the way...'When Jon Richardson unearthed his teenage diaries among a stash of 1990s mementoes, he hesitated before opening them. What possible value could there be in revisiting the awkward, unfiltered thoughts of a 14-year-old boy, especially now, in his forties and a successful comedian, actor and father?As it turns out, quite a lot.In this candid memoir, Jon reconnects with his younger self - a boy growing up in an era when Oasis dominated the charts and Baywatch dominated his imagination. From embarrassing teenage misadventures, including a mortifying PE lesson involving a climbing rope, to small but significant triumphs like earning a pack of Chewits for the 'cleanest tent' at scout camp, Jon revisits the moments that shaped him and, ultimately, set him on the path to comedy.Beneath the humour lies something deeper: a raw exploration of adolescence, identity and growing up working-class with seemingly limited horizons. With his trademark self-deprecating wit, Jon reflects not just on his youth, but on what it means to grow up and whether we ever really leave our younger selves behind.The Teenage Diaries of a Stand-Up Comedian will take readers on a vivid trip down memory lane but above all it is a moving reflection on how we see ourselves, then and now.