Mark Watson to publish biography Mortification
- Stand-up Mark Watson has announced a print edition of his biographical work 8 Deaths (And Life After Them)
- The new version, Mortification, will be published on 17th August
Mark Watson has announced his first printed autobiography.
Based on an earlier audio project, Mortification is subtitled "Eight Deaths And Life After Them", and will be published on 17th August by Phoenix.
8 Deaths (And Life After Them) was first released as an audio-only project just before Christmas 2021, with the comedian today promising the new incarnation to be "reworked and improved from the audiobook it once was".
Posting on Twitter, he wrote: "It's meant to be a fun read, but it IS a darker proposition than most books you'll see comedians release, so I wanted to briefly introduce it here.
"I've been pretty honest in public about the feelings of inadequacy and failure which have stalked me through the past 10 years or so: since it became obvious I was not as talented as I'd once been allowed to believe, wasn't destined to succeed in the ways I used to imagine.
"Comedy, writing, all my chosen fields are pretty brutal for this. The comparison with other people is near-unavoidable, and very public. If you do it for 20 years, like me, you see many more distinctive people overtake you, and you feel the burn of that every time you wake up. I've touched on it briefly on stage, but: I reacted to the incrementing disappointments of my career across my thirties by becoming a really bad, dysfunctional person, racked by addictions, selfish, endlessly running away from everything. This book is a reckoning with that.
"These feelings, though - of never being good enough, having failed to live up to some version of yourself that might have existed - are very common, whatever your goals. They never go away, but they can be grappled with, like all mental patterns. The book's also about that. I'm hoping it might be helpful to some readers out there, somewhere, to hear about the way a brain can torture a person over a period of many years regardless of the seeming desirability of their career/life; even if they once kicked a yoghurt against a wall absolutely sublimely. (Even THAT was only an out-take on Taskmaster, because it was a tiebreaker, but you can find it on YouTube, and it's one hell of a 60 seconds of TV. So there's that, legacy-wise.)"
He adds: "So the book's about the comedy industry and what it can do to you (sometimes in an amount of detail which led to involved legal discussions), but also about being a human, one among billions trying to find your purpose, and what THAT can do to you. A bit memoir, a bit self-help.
"Anyway, thanks for listening to all that. I'm quite a lot better than I was. When I first came to write the book, I think I imagined it as a catharsis. 'Here's what I've learned, you're welcome!' But no: it's more that life is just a long work-in-progress. And maybe that's OK."
Mortification is available to pre-order in hardback and digital eBook formats now.
Mark Watson's 8 Deaths (And Life After Them)
Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he's died. In fact, he's died loads of times.
On stage.
It's embarrassing. Excruciating. But dying on stage isn't the only death Mark's suffered. There's also been the death of his innocence. The death of that absolutely brilliant project that everyone told him was really amazing. And that time he died inside.
In this warm-hearted, hilarious memoir he takes you behind the scenes of a life - and many deaths - in comedy and beyond. From his early years on the circuit, to getting lost in the world of TV, Mark reveals everything: when he died and when he lived. 8 Deaths will show you that it's not how you die that counts - it's how you live.
First published: Thursday 2nd December 2021
- Publisher: Audible.com
- Minutes: 403
Buy and sell old and new items
Search for this product on eBay
BCG may earn commission on sales generated through the links above.
Mark Watson - Mortification: Eight Deaths And Life After Them
Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he's died many times. Not just on stage - though he'll tell you about that - but in other ways, too. There's been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all...
Eye-opening, revealing and painfully funny, this is a book about mortification, failure and all the times life doesn't work out as planned. But it also wisely questions whether the things we strive for - recognition, success, the approval of others - are really the things that matter. It's a book about death that reminds us how to live.
First published: Thursday 17th August 2023
- Publisher: Phoenix
- Pages: 256
- Catalogue: 9781399607681
Buy and sell old and new items
Search for this product on eBay
BCG may earn commission on sales generated through the links above.
- Publisher: Phoenix
BCG may earn commission on sales generated through the links above.