Alan Davies

Alan Davies was always a hoarder. Pages from Smash Hits, rolled up gig posters, Cup Final ticket stubs, Woody Allen paperbacks, NME covers and Blondie calendars filled boxes once used to ferry shopping home from supermarkets (back when supermarkets would leave boxes out for the ferrying of shopping). Not much that came down from Alan's bedroom wall made it into the bin, never mind the uninvented bin-liner.

Growing up is not easy. So many decisions: Who to revere, Sheene or McEnroe? Who to imitate, Starsky or Hutch? Who to dislike overnight in an effort to show maturity, Thatcher or Scargill? How to decide which pin-ups to unpin when a batch of Animal Rights leaflets or a satirical poster of Ronald Reagan demand wallspace?

The Impressionable Age of a young man lasts around a decade and the idols and icons of that period can reveal much of the time and of the impressed subject.

Nostalgic, warm and laugh-out-loud funny, My Favourite People & Me: 1978-1988 is an affectionate trip through a suburban childhood in Essex and an eighties education in Kent. As Alan says, "an attempt to remember who and what I liked as a boy/youth/idiot and to work out why. There are also some pictures."

First published: Thursday 3rd September 2009