Gyles Brandreth's first autobiography to Michael Joseph

Penguin Michael Joseph has acquired the first autobiography from veteran broadcaster and former MP Gyles Brandreth.

Titled Odd Boy Out, it will publish in hardback, e-book and audio on 16th September 2021. Daniel Bunyard acquired world all language rights, including audio, from Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown.

The publisher said the autobiography is "full of insight into [Brandreth's] often eccentric and at times tragic family background and early years".

Brandreth said: ‘“This isn’t the autobiography I had expected to write. My wife said to me, ‘If you’re going to tell your story, tell it properly—dig a bit deeper.’ That’s what I have tried to do and in doing so I’ve discovered things about myself, and my family, that I didn’t know before. It’s called Odd Boy Out because as I was writing it I realised I was a bit of an oddity as a child.

"The book tries to explain how I became who I am. It’s a book about childhood and growing up. It’s about how our parents make us what we are. There is a bit of name-dropping along the way (from Laurence Olivier to Baga Chipz) and some funny stories that people who have seen or heard me on 'Just a Minute' and 'QI' would expect, but it isn’t like anything I’ve ever done before. It comes from the heart.”

Bunyard added: “I feel very proud to be publishing this, our third book with Gyles, after the success of his bestselling guide to grammar Have You Eaten Grandma? and his poetry anthology, Dancing by the Light of the Moon. I had expected it to be elegantly written, full of wit and charm, but I hadn’t anticipated how profoundly moving it would be, nor how enthralling in his retracing of his family’s history. It’s a stupendous piece of writing, richly evoking a period and its figures as much as Gyles’ own personal growth into the man we know and love.”