Not so long ago, you couldn’t move for celebrity memoirs. It didn’t matter how famous you were – a television presenter, a professional footballer, some vaguely recognisable reality TV git – at some point you would write an autobiography (or bark some nonsense at an indifferent ghostwriter), give it a terrible title such as Reflections or Unfiltered or My Story and sit back as you watched the money roll in.
Now, celebrity autobiographies haven’t gone away completely – two of the most inescapable books this autumn are memoirs by Matthew Perry and Bono – but they are sputtering out. After all, there are only so many celebrities in the world, and traditionally you can only tell your life story once. But if you are a public figure with a large and willing audience, you might be loath to give up all that sweet publishing cash, so what is a celebrity to do?
