It’s rare for comedians to be as funny on paper as they are on stage, but Rich Hall nails it ‘– CARL HIAASEN There is the account of his time in Las Vegas, insulting RV drivers, until he has the chance to try one for himself. We see how important integrity is to Hall, but how the attractions of a large vehicle can sometimes lead to a compromise. Meryl bookclub 2024 maybe ✅ …. American comedian Rich Hall recalls moments in his comedy career when he nailed it, gleefully hamming up his moments of triumph, hilariously accompanied by humiliation, unexpected failure and many, many teachable moments. Why do so many comedians want to be honoured as musicians? There is only a handful of entertainers who have ever been seen to combine and deploy both talents successfully: Les Dennis, victor Borge, Tom Lehrer … It wasn’t exactly a triumph, and he didn’t get the girl, but he had found his true calling. Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall’s professional and personal life where he really had to nail it. They’re not about glitz, or fame, or how he met his seventh wife at the rehab clinic and found spiritual direction.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Book Group for an advanced copy of this memoir and recollections of a life spent being funny. Publisher Katy Follain said: ‘I am so excited for people to read Rich Hall’s book. It’s sharp, it’s witty and it’s extremely funny.It's rare for comedians to be as funny on paper as they are on stage, but Rich Hall nails it. He is clearly a writer at heart, and his true tales about life on the stand-up comedy circuit are hilarious, touching, and bravely personal. I selfishly wish he had his own TV show here in the States, but this book will fill the void nicely until he does * Carl Hiaasen * The first half is grampa throwing slippers at the TV. Angry American-British-centric rants. It’s an attempt to explain to Brits that they don’t really have any problems compared with what’s going on in America. This is pantomime. America is on the edge of the apocalypse. Britain is this ongoing shuffling of weird ghoulish political figures who are around for a while and then … next! They move on and somebody else comes out on stage. The second half of the show is very improvisational and very musical. It’s my favourite part and it’s way more interactive with the audience. Hall’s origin story is suitably quixotic, starting life as a comic street performer, going from campus to campus in the guise of an evangelical preacher spreading the word of dog, proselytising all the canines in his ad-hoc crowd. It sounds like a great act. Hall says: ‘There are only two kinds of good comedy: smart stupid and stupid smart. With Nailing It, I strived for the latter, but I can live with the former.’ The account of the Frenchman is telling: Rich is as funny and honest about country music as about anything else, but the message is the same- ‘A valuable culture and tradition has been sold out by others.’

Well written, funny and occasionally quite somber (that last chapter hits hard man) I’m going to pour myself a bundy and coke and continue marvelling at the gorgeous cover drawn by the supernaturally talented Andrew Smith Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall's professional and personal life where he really had to nail it. They're not about glitz, or fame, or how he met his seventh wife at the rehab clinic and found spiritual direction. None of that happened to him. Through a series of anecdotes and episodes from his life, Rich Hall builds a vivid picture of his life and career. We find out how he met his wife, Karen, how he first got into comedy, the girl who got away, and meeting the man who replaced him.Hall's genius, on the spot lyrical rhyming is raucously entertaining and very clever' (Spears magazine) These are stories about the crux of the comedy moment - in both my professional and personal life - where I had to nail it. Screwball turn-of-events, wayward characters, unplanned disasters, and something-wonderful-right-away moments that made my life funny by happenstance. They're not all triumphs, but if someone propped me up at the end of the comedy bar and put a quarter in me, these are the tunes I would spin.

I was doing this long before I met you’ may have been one of his best lines: I think of Joseph Hayden’s wife using the composer’s manuscripts for wrapping vegetables: ‘Behind every great man…’. A particularly odd open spot – and a surreal turn of events – gave him an unlikely inspiration for a TV audition, and he got on to the writing team for David Letterman, who embraced the weird and disruptive when TV was barely ready for it. There was a one-season stint on Saturday Night Live (alongside Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jim Belushi and Pamela Stephenson) and Hall became known on the talk-show circuit for creating ‘Sniglets’–‘any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary but should’, akin to the Meaning Of Liff books in the UK. So much for the career rundown, but it’s the strange-but-true incidents along the way which shine in this book. Such as the time Hall got carried away with Crenshaw’s white trash artifice, attending –in character – the funeral of a bogan Australian fan he never knew.Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall’s professional and personal life where he really had to nail it. They’re not about glitz, or fame, or how he met his seventh wife at the rehab clinic and found spiritual direction. None of that happened to him. This isn't really a traditional memoir, it's more a collection of anecdotal essays ostensibly concerning the hit-and-miss nature of life lessons. Because Mr. Hall is a long established comedian, who apparently has developed a large following in the UK, there is more substance (not to mention cultural variety) to the stories shared here than your average celebrity of the moment tell-all. It's basically the tale of someone who found what he loves to do and somehow stumbled into a career doing it. Last year there were rumours of a UK version of Saturday Night Live in the works. You were an SNL cast member for the 1984-85 season. Do you think the format would work with a British audience?

All-in-all, I enjoyed this collection of anecdotes from the perspective of a somewhat more working-man celebrity... And not just because: Yes! There is a chapter featuring Otis Lee Crenshaw (a surreal moment of real life/performance art colliding at a funeral service in Scotland). It's more witty fun than roll on the floor hilarious but I found NAILING IT! by Rich Hall to be an entertaining read.

ARTIST GALLERY

Hall might not share the excesses of the forebears he mentions, but he still embraces the easily romanticised idea of the the grizzled road comedian, the travelling troubadour with every line on that notoriously craggy Moe Szyslak face telling a story. His honesty makes me think Diogenes the original Cynic must have been like this, or an Old Testament prophet: they were probably performers too. We learn of his time in Edinburgh when he was nominated for the Perrier Award. We learn of his time singing with Roger Daltrey at the Royal Albert Hall. The formation of his band, and the development of his alter-ego, the grouchy singer-songwriter Otis Lee Crenshaw.