Fourth time reading. Okay I'm going to stop updating now. Suffice to say this is a book I will be reading regularly for forever...

When Allen came out as a young adult – first to his mum and then to his dad on the phone – his parents were “hugely emotional. Families are naturally more compassionate than we give them credit for, I think. But my dad was born in 1941. Not only was [homosexuality] illegal but no one had time for it. But when I came out to him he was mainly upset that I hadn’t felt able to talk to him about it before.” He rallies. “And also: ’Why do you talk about being gay all the time?’ Well, it’s because people wouldn’t let me talk about it for the first half of my life! They say: ‘You’ve got gay marriage now so everything’s OK, isn’t it?’ But it’s not like there’s a switch that’s been flipped in me. You can still carry that sense of shame. That internalised homophobia.” Writing my first book, No Shame, I tried to be as honest and vulnerable as I could. I found that the more you talk about being an outsider or feeling different, you realise everybody’s an outsider in some way. In a world of social media filters, it’s refreshing to strip that away. Honesty seemed to work, so even though it was a seismic change that I went through with losing my dad – and also getting a boyfriend and finally moving out of my parents’ house – I decided to write about it in a similar way. I’m not going to mark this book down for covering some of the stories Tom tells in his standup because it’s his life story and these stories are integral to showing his long journey to coming out as gay. The book is also potentially for a different audience so I don’t think this is a problem, I still thoroughly enjoyed it!Comedian Tom Allen, 39, grew up in Bromley and trained with the National Youth theatre. He started standup aged 22, winning So You Think You’re Funny and the BBC New Comedy award in the same year. He regularly appears on TV series including The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice, and as a host on The Apprentice: You’re Fired and Cooking With the Stars. He’s currently performing warm-up gigs before going on the road in February with a new standup tour, Completely. His second memoir, Too Much, is published this week. The author's voice comes through very clearly and there are some wonderful phrases that I can imagine as part of a stand up act. My problem with the book is that the anecdotes are not developed enough. I finished the book knowing about some things that had happened but not enough about his feelings and emotions. One of the most valuable aspects of No Shame is its admission that self-doubt can linger even after coming out. “It doesn’t go away overnight,” he says. “While it’s wonderful that we have made great steps in terms of law and visibility, it can be difficult to catch up with that positivity if you carry internalised negativity after all those years.” Take that Pride slogan, Love Is Love. “It’s wonderful, and so true. But I, for one, have never been in love and so I feel, ‘Oh, that’s something else I can’t join in with.’ Because I’ve found it impossible to have a meaningful long-term relationship.”

Too Much by Tom Allen is the wonderfully funny and moving new book for 2022 by one of Britain's most charming comedians. With his signature acerbic wit and riotous storytelling, Tom Allen has cemented himself as a household name and star on both stage and screen. He’s the hilarious host of The Apprentice: You’re Fired, he co-hosts Cooking with the Stars and is also a regular on Bake Off: An Extra Slice and Alan Carr’s There’s Something About Movies. In 2021 he became the co-host of Channel 4’s Complaints Welcome, and last year hosted brand-new Dave series The Island.Clearly the book was a cathartic process for the author and having the opportunity to write a book looking at his relationship with his Dad is a lovely thing to do. An extraordinary portrait of a son navigating his way through grief and loss in real time. Funny, candid, and measured' GRAHAM NORTON There is comedy as well as pathos, much of it focusing on Allen’s conflicting desperation both to fit in and to be special. Occasionally, self-deprecation crosses into self‑flagellation, and some of his analysis is painful to read. He has a perfectionist’s eye (and an obsession with interior design) and is expert at skewering the banality of grief – such as when a funeral home “resembled less a threshold between this life and the next and more a conference suite … the sort of space a local accountancy firm might hold its quarterly meetings”.