Customer Reviews
Too much information - By: Bantam Dave, 03 Nov 2008 
Terry-Thomas is one of the very few actors that, on seeing his namein the cast list, will persuade me watch a film simply because he isin it. School for Scoundrels, the Naked Truth & Privates Progress are just three films from this era that just wouldn't be half the films they are without his presencein them.
In the 50's, which were surely the Golden age of British film comedy, his portrayals of the upper-class bounder enriched most of the films he appeared in. In the 60's he made it bigin Hollywood too; the movie goersin the States saw him as the typical English toff & they took him to their hearts. Before his film career took off he became a big name (as well as being a pioneer)in British television comedy through his hard work & his insistance on the high quality of his output.
I was hoping that Graham McCanns biography would do full justice to the man but I was a little disappointed with it. Terry-Thomas brought fun & laughter to people for most of his life & would like that to have been reflectedin his biography but instead I found this book to be much too dry & matter of fact. By far & away the best part of the book are the closing chapters which deal with Terry-Thomas's sad decline through Parkinsons Disease & subsequent death. The author makes an excellent job of describing the sadness of that time, when the terrible illness reduced Terry-Thomas from being the well dressed dandy to a man on the brink of destitution. These pages are well written, though upsetting to read.
One last complaint; the book is around 320 pages long. Of these, only 190 are the actual biography. The rest is a list of Terry-Thomas's screen appearances & pages upon pages of notes with references to the text of the book. These pages take up approximately 40% of the book, which is far too much. This left me feeling cheated.
Biography versus autobiography - By: D. Armitage, 06 Oct 2008 
I recently bought two books on characters who could be thought to have significant similarities,including one of their catchphrases, "Hello", & both living & workingin roughly the same era. These were the autobiography of Lesley Philips,entitled "Hello" & "Bounder!". Fortunately I read "Hello" first & then "Bounder", so that I finished on a high!
The following are some of the positive aspects of "Bounder!", & possibly of many biographies over autobiographies:
There is a wealth of detail showing meticulous research, culled from a wide range of sources.
Relationships with significant characters who appearin both books, e.g. the Boulting Brothers, are seen & recorded from a detached viewpoint.
The innovative & imaginative contribution to different developing & international media (T-Tin radio, fledgling UK TV & film)is much better documented.
Finally, the book is just a delight to read, through reading it T-T will be remembered by me as not just an entertainer that I enjoyed on radio & film (I missed the TV) but as an incredibly talented & creative artist, a true Alpha male, with all of an Alpha's strengths & weaknesses. His illness & death were tragic both for him & his family/friends but evenin that he was a pioneer through publicising & raising the profile of Parkinsons.
His irony resounds throughout the book, as he commented he was, after all, Parkinson's first guest on his chat show.
Jolly Good Show! - By: RickyT, 10 Sep 2008 Terry-Thomas was one of those actors who seemed not simply to create a public persona for himself but actually BECOME that personin private as well. Although he grew upin an 'ordinary' middle class familyin Finchley (Richard Briers was his second cousin), he became someone completely different through a sheer act of will. He dressed like a dandy, acted like a 'toff' & spoke like a character out of PG Wodehouse. And he had a fantastically lush & successful life until, tragically, illness took its toll. In this beauty of a biography, Graham McCann treats "T-T" with great warmth & respect, although he doesn't ignore the flaws, excesses & the odd 'absolute stinker' of a film choice! We get to hear about the pranks, the gambles, the crises & the triumphs, with some truly hilarious anecdotes (and not justin the main body of the text, either - remember to glance through the notes section at the end to see delightful little 'extras' about, for example, Terry's battles with the builders who were renovating his house & the day Peter Jones discovered that his fellow actor was sporting special 'bespoke' underpants!). The great period as one of the Boulting Brothers' key characters, & the 'fun' era as a Hollywood celebrity, are covered with care & good insight, as are the years as a Briton abroadin Ibiza, & then you are moved close to tears by the sensitive account of how Terry-Thomas was broken down by Parkinson's disease. It's all very well-researched but very brightly, engagingly presented, & a fitting tribute to one of the greats of British cinema, TV & comedy.
