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Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny: My Autobiography

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The hysterical, shocking and incredibly intimate memoir from one of the most original and unique comedians alive today.

Hello! I’m Brian Limond, aka Limmy. You might know me from Limmy’s Show. Or you might not know me at all. Don’t worry if you don’t.

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.

I said to them, oh, I don’t know if I could fill a whole book with just that. But how’s about I write a general autobiography type of thing, and all the mental health stuff will naturally appear along the way? I could talk about growing up and slashing my wrist and taking acid all the time and getting done for car theft and feeling like a mad freak that would never amount to anything.

And then how I made my own sketch show. I directed it and everything. Plus I’m a dad. I’m an adult. But I still feel like that mad freak from years ago. I still feel like chucking it all away, for a laugh.

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.

They said aye.

So here it is.

352 pages, Paperback

First published February 21, 2019

140 people are currently reading
1435 people want to read

About the author

Limmy

5 books181 followers
Brian "Limmy" Limond is a Scottish comedian, actor, and web developer. He first became known for his website and blog. In late 2006, his daily podcast Limmy's World of Glasgow received interest from the mainstream British media. In early 2010, Limond achieved success with his BBC sketch show series Limmy's Show. He is also a prolific user of the social networking applications Twitter, YouTube and Vine.

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5 stars
2,301 (48%)
4 stars
1,908 (39%)
3 stars
498 (10%)
2 stars
70 (1%)
1 star
15 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews
Profile Image for Andy Marr.
Author 4 books1,168 followers
November 5, 2021
I've been a fan of Limmy for many years, and am surprised it took me so long to read any of his books. It's a long time since I was able to identify so strongly with a book. Like me, Limmy's had his problems with the demon drink, and suffered periods of poor mental health. But he told the story in an upbeat, positive way, which made it a pleasure rather than a trial to read. What was clear was that he's a lovely, compassionate man, and while I can't know how the past few years have planned out for him, I hope he's found some peace with himself, and with the family he so clearly loves.
Profile Image for Odi Shonga.
93 reviews19 followers
March 3, 2019
One of my favourite comedians is a fairly unknown Glaswegian man who goes by the name of Limmy. He’s fairly famous in Scotland, less so in the rest of the UK, and I imagine he falls somewhere between unknown and maximally niche to the rest of the world. However, he’s one of my favourites because he’s kind of the full package, for me. I don’t mean that in a weird, inappropriate way — hear me out. His humour ultimately revolves around a kind of absurd storytelling. When you hear something like that, along with the fact I earlier used the words “maximally niche”, you would be forgiven for thinking he was some hauty, intellectual type that is only funny in a very specific, academic way. No, his humour is surprisingly down to earth, which makes the title of his autobiography an apt description of himself. Of course, that’s not the title because he intended to describe himself. It refers to an ongoing Twitter joke he has, wherein upon the death of any public figure, he tells his half a million followers that he met them at a charity do once, and that they were surprisingly down to earth, and very funny. He does it without fail for anybody famous enough, and he has a large enough following that it occasionally gets picked up by news outlets and broadcast morosely in serious contexts. This is the kind of thing he finds hilarious. So he decided to name his autobiography for the joke, as a morbid reference. Of course, he will die some day, and here he is naming his autobiography after a joke centred on the deaths of public figures. When he dies, the title of his autobiography will both harken back to this absurd joke of his while genuinely being true of him. That’s the kind of humour the guy operates with.

Perhaps that excessively long opening paragraph won’t convince you that he’s worth checking out. If so, fair enough. I’ll move on. Another part of Limmy’s appeal is his apparent lack of a personal filter. Of course, he has boundaries when it comes to private information and anything in connection with his family, but when it comes to his personality or thoughts, he is as forthcoming as it gets. A lot of us go through life eminently unsure of what we’re doing; we feel lost and lonely in our lostness. The condition isn’t helped because the default stance required to survive in our culture is to pretend to know what you’re doing, so we all end up suffering an illusory effect: everyone else seems to have it figured out, but because we know our own minds, we know we don’t. It’s people like Limmy who are our saving graces. They come out with it straight: they are clueless, everyone else is clueless, we’re all winging it, and we’re not always very good at winging it. This is what makes the autobiography worth reading. Its “raison d’etre” was meant to be to talk about mental health stuff, and it kind of does, but I submit that it is strongest for the fact that it shows you a normal guy who has fucked up, succeeded, fucked up some more, and is just plugging away at it. He’s like any of us (except, of course, with a better knack for weaving a funny story), and that makes us feel less alone.

The best parts of the autobiography, therefore, are the parts where he talks about feeling weird, different, like a fuck-up, but also when these are juxtaposed with the normal facts of life like getting a job, having sexual or romantic troubles (and successes), not getting on with your flatmate, and trying not to become destitute. Ironically, I think the part most worthy of negative criticism is probably when he is talking directly about mental health stuff — the reason the book was asked to be written in the first place. There’s a bit where he talks about going off antidepressants cold turkey, but he doesn’t really dwell on why this might not be such a good idea, and how some people end up dying thinking they can suddenly go off their mental health medication. He doesn’t advocate doing it, but he talks about it in a fairly neutral way, like there’s no real danger to it.

Outside of that, however, I think the book’s great. It reads like a chronological collection of anecdotes surrounding the theme of being a bit of a weirdo, and sometimes that’s just what we need: a reminder that other people are as wonky as we are.
Profile Image for Sam Crisp.
19 reviews5 followers
Read
March 29, 2022
Best book you can read about a Flash developer.
Profile Image for Gavin.
Author 3 books616 followers
February 22, 2019
Auto theft, fanny fright, incompetent but dogged self-harm, raving and tripping as self-medication, dole stupor, bail skipping, the death drive, pretend machismo, pretend homosexuality, alcoholism, Flash animation, BBC showrunner. Not very funny but very entertaining. (His shows are funny.)

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.

He crosses into the middle class through IT, anxious about looking like the 'wee ned guy' in the office. And then into Design (a colony of the Art world, where a rough background's a bonus), and then to TV comedy, and then to streaming, where rawness and obliquity and patter means dollas. It's a nice story.

It's about being strange in a normal, subclinical* way: intrusive thoughts, groundless anxiety, reduced affect display, auditory hallucination, mild paranoia, misanthropy, hysteroid dysphoria.
I must sound like a fuckin robot tae you. But it's just the way I'm wired. I never felt sad about my mum dying.


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.

The deep function of laughter is apparently that it allows play / boundary learning / questioning social norms. So to be a comedian, you have be a step past your society. (I doubt funniness is linear in weirdness though.) And Limmy is obviously out there. He regularly tweets about how much he misses drinking (which I've never seen an alcoholic do), and satirises the now-daily flamewars of the shouting classes by taking absurd and alternating stances on every issue (...) .

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.)

Audiobook's worth it - the prose is very plain and his accent's strong but clear. Fans only, but you should be a fan.

---

* There are also dozens of suicidal episodes though.
Profile Image for Clare.
135 reviews
December 28, 2020
More of 2.5 star.

I love Limmy and really enjoy his humour, but this was just so beyond what I enjoy reading lol Of course, I didn’t expect jokes constantly and I honestly really enjoyed his view on mental illness and being human, even when his writing got very dark at times.

But I couldn’t enjoy all the teenage/college age years. It was just not what I wanted to read about. Not Limmy’s fault of course, but I view myself as someone who can appreciate crass humour or explicit sex stories - and the stuff in this book was just way too bleugh for me. That’s all I can describe it as. I just didn’t want to read about him masturbating or his sexual encounters. It grossed me out and honestly made me want to DNF, which takes a lot, but it just wasn’t enjoyable or funny or even cringy. It was just bleugh.

This was an audiobook though, so that might have made things all the worse 😂
2 reviews
February 25, 2020
I didn't take so long reading this because it's bad, or because it's long, I'm just really really bad at reading books.

What do I read now
Profile Image for Paul Rodger.
1 review
October 28, 2020
One of the most readable autobiographies you’ll come across. From hilarious anecdotes to emotional admissions about his struggles with addiction and mental health, Limmy’s honesty and unflinching account of his life is very refreshing. You don’t need to be a fan of his work to appreciate a lot of what this book has to offer - highly recommend
Profile Image for Ewan.
265 reviews14 followers
May 3, 2022
There's no way of describing Limmy's autobiography without using the title in some capacity because that is what it is. It is surprisingly down to Earth, and it is very funny. Limmy is a funny bloke and this traipse through his ups and downs, his openness about his mental health and his humour flows with ease. Maybe it's because he is used to writing up his thoughts, as he details in the various segments about his time on Twitter and away from the sitcom circle. That much explains a lot of how his humour transfers to the page, but also does much more to cement the earnest nature, the honesty and the life experiences Limmy learned along the way.
Profile Image for Ben Hadfield.
8 reviews
February 15, 2023
wow was expecting a book full of jests and chuckles, actually just really depressing

highlight: the very in-depth chapter about him wanking
Profile Image for Jacob.
53 reviews3 followers
May 24, 2025
Candid to a fault and more relatable at times than I thought it would be, would definitely recommend the audiobook version, which made this even more hilarious and personal than it already is.
Profile Image for Jacob.
41 reviews
October 30, 2021
One of the stable joys of lockdown has been devouring Limmy content, quoting nonsense like "they're playing a wee game of ludo" or "it is fucking 90!" to friends or myself if I need a laugh. I devoured this autobiography just as enthusiastically. For some reason, I really wasn't prepared for the title to sell the book so perfectly. Whilst it's no surprise this book is indeed very funny, it's Limmy's shockingly open approach to discussing his struggles with mental health, addiction and self-esteem that cements this as one of the best autobiographies I've read. All told with his signature crass silliness, Limmy nonetheless hides nothing about his lifelong battles, inviting you into several unbelievable anecdotes and genuinely poignant passages challenging his past behaviour right up to the present moment. Parts of this rattled me to the core, helping me confront negative thoughts and cycles of my own. Reading this feels far less like a TV comedian recounting their successes and failures, instead resembling a close friend spilling their secrets and fears in the early hours, interspersed with crude banter and surprise punchlines. So yes, surprisingly down to earth! Very funny! An utter pleasure.
Profile Image for Anna.
67 reviews1 follower
November 19, 2021
Really loved this. Felt as though I was just listening to limmy tell his life story. Very very honest which was refreshing. Maybe a bit too honest?! Nah I’m joking but he’s very open about everything which I loved. Maybe I loved this so much bc I really like limmy and find him funny. It has definitely gave me the confidence to go up and speak to him if I ever see him walking about town. Funny that he comes from really near ek and I knew everywhere he was talking about when he was talking about his childhood. Lot of respect for him for talking about things which I can imagine are hard to admit
Profile Image for Goodreeds User.
287 reviews21 followers
August 11, 2025
You've got to have a laugh sometimes, in spite of everything, you've got to have a nice laugh
Profile Image for Louis Curtis.
19 reviews1 follower
May 15, 2024
This is the first autobiography I've ever read and I'm not really sure what metric to judge it on. I can't really judge it on its prose, because the author isn't a writer. I can't judge it on the content because it's someone's life - you can't just embellish details to make it more interesting.

So I'm judging it on digestibility and enjoyment. Was it easy to read? Very. Did I enjoy it? Very much so.
Profile Image for Kit.
800 reviews46 followers
January 11, 2022
Limmy is a beautiful golden manboy and no one will ever compare to his stories.
Profile Image for John Braine.
387 reviews41 followers
April 12, 2019
This is the first time I've read an autobiography where, in the very minor way of an average fan, I've shared so many of the moments mentioned in the book. I loved limmy.com as soon as I heard about it, and the blog that followed, and I remember some of his twitter storms. I was at his live show in Edinburgh which was amazing and I was the first to shake his hand after (he was hiding behind the exit door to shake everyone's hand). I somehow missed his podcasts but was excited and delighted to see his talents being appreciated by the big wigs when he got his own tv show Limmy's Show. I really gravitate towards talented people who made their way into the world with their very own style of homemade comedy: Limmy, Adam & Joe, and Blindboy. Love them all.

Back to Limmy fandom: More recently I devoured his two books Daft Wee Stories and That’s Your Lot. I've loved everything he's done and thinking back on all those moments made this (audio)book all the more special and enjoyable. I couldn't put it down. I haven't listened to anything else for the last few days, and it's the best thing I've listened to in ages. Limmy has such a unique way of looking at the world and talking about his experiences of it. He's not afraid to tell you about all the times he was a complete shitebag, or all the times he seriously contemplated suicide, and lots more really intimate stuff in between all the amazing moments in the career of someone who started making funny stuff on his homepage and ended up making funny stuff for his own BBC tv show, writing several books and being an all-around hilarious fucking legend.

- - -

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.

- - -

Anyway. Looking forward to the next Limmy book tour.
Profile Image for Roger.
323 reviews1 follower
March 6, 2022
The book that Lloyd Cole, from out of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, famously described on Radio 4 as showing "intelligence of some kind", this is as honest and as readable an autobiography as you are going to find. From a literary point of view, it is not great, it is not particularly elaborately written, or even funny, but it is not meant to be, it is meant to be Limmy talking honestly about his life. And five stars for that.

In that Lloyd Cole review, which you can see Limmy talking about on his youtube channel, Lloyd Cole said maybe one reason he didn't get into the book was because he didn't know Limmy's work when he read it, and that much makes sense. If you are a fan of Limmy you will get much more from this than someone who doesn't know him. Personally, I am a huge fan of "Limmy's Show", so when he starts talking about the "Millport" sketch or the "Yoker" sketch I know exactly what he is talking about and found it fascinating to see the genesis of the ideas behind these sketches and how they came to be made. If you are not a fan, that may be less interesting, though you can always watch the sketches on youtube as you are reading.

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.

And your last album was shite, by the way.
Profile Image for Sophia Araya.
30 reviews2 followers
May 15, 2024
Relatable, funny, random, intimate, embarrassing, endearing…

Loved the audiobook so much I’m going to read the book itself now. I first saw Limmy on YouTube and had such a hard time understanding his Glaswegian accent 🥲then I started to understand him more and more along with the slang words and a slightly different vocabulary. Turns out he’s hilarious once you know what he’s saying. Then I became obsessed with his streaming videos and started watching his sketch show. Listening to his autobiography gave me so much insight on who is now one of my favorite comedians, but what I loved MOST about this book was how relatable it was. He is so honest and vulnerable about his “shadow side” and the stuff that he says makes him feel like a mad freak, but it’s all very human and relatable. Although parts were pretty dark and sad, it summed up the strange human experience and overall it somehow made me feel warm and fuzzy after listening to it. Looking forward to reading it.
36 reviews1 follower
May 12, 2025
I GOBBLED this book up in one day! It's so funny and so honest? It felt interesting to be in the head of a white Glaswegian man, hearing his silly thoughts and also seeing his deep insecurities. I loved the insights into his masculinity and how fragile it can be - the man writes about his shame and jealousy of needing to get IVF due to his poor sperm quality while making it hilarious. Also it was fun being able to hear his Glaswegian accent (I listened to the audiobook) and to pick out places I knew from the locations he described. Five star book by far wow
Profile Image for Lauren Thompson.
80 reviews
February 24, 2022
I did not want this book to end. I was in tears laughing and just had the best time reading about all the mad antics and wild times. Such a genuine and honest guy who isn’t out to impress anyone. If you get Limmy’s personality/humour you will love this book, it’s a must-read and I miss it already.
Profile Image for Stephen Ellis.
27 reviews
December 6, 2019
You won't find a more open and honest autobiography, a mix of humour and self-help. Brilliant.
Profile Image for Sara Hughes.
283 reviews11 followers
October 16, 2021
Aye yer oot yer face if you're gonnae no’ read this book
Profile Image for alina.
160 reviews9 followers
October 11, 2020
I LOVED this...I absolutely fucking loved it. I did that thing where I enjoyed the book so intensely that I flew through it in one day, which is frustrating because I wanted it to go on forever. I think this might be the most enjoyable book I’ve read so far this year and all I wanted to do was sit and carry on reading it until there was no more of it left to read. a lot of stuff in this book was starkly relatable, I ADORED how it was written, I loved the honesty and the frankness and the humour and the liberal use of the word cunt. I just loved absolutely everything about this book and I want to shove it at people and make them read it so I can talk to them about it
Profile Image for Harry Goodwin.
216 reviews1 follower
March 24, 2025
(Let's call it 4.5)
Well, I was not expecting Limmy to be the karl ove knausgard of the comedy world! The way that he unselfconsciously excavates his life is inspiring. I think a lot of fiction writers, hiding behind characters and much less direct prose, don't even pull out a fraction of themselves compared to this. And it made me feel like we should do. Because even the darkest and saddest episodes here are things we all understand, have either gone through or know someone close who has. Radical honesty and frankness! Extremely refreshing. AND guess what! It's very funny.
- Thanks for the rec J!
Btw I listened to the audiobook and can highly recommend it for his inimitable delivery.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews

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