I picked this book up because I enjoyed David Niven’s “The Moon’s A Balloon” and “Bring On the Empty Horses”; as well as Errol Flynn’s “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.” I hoped that Everett’s book might be their equal, but actually it’s a prancing step above them. Perhaps had Flynn been more truthful we could have read similar tales from him. I mean, what was Flynn doing in Jack Warner’s office alone with him all the time, anyway? Not to mention Flynn’s long-term bachelor-pad guest Truman Capote. And whereas David Niven was an amusing raconteur, there are depths of sadness within the fabric of this book that hold so many sparkly sequins of wit.Everett’s book is a real page turner. It’s hard to put down for long because one reaches for it at every spare moment just for the brain endorphin and dopamine chemical stews that bathe our neurons, synapses, and even happy-faced glial cells - happy by being so entertained, stimulated, shocked, and informed. He is quick with a brilliant turn of phrase. For example, here he explains how the stage dynamics changed when the play they were doing in Glasgow travelled to London’s West End: “…what had once been a living being on a Glasgow stage quickly turned into a dead body on the West-End slab, drained of its blood and filled with theatrical formaldehyde to sustain its waxy lifeless form through eight open-coffined funerals a week.” Or, “Far away on the horizon, Miami Beach was a thin line dividing the elements upon which the new towers of South Point were like little jagged blips on a fading cardiogram.”True to form there is quite a bit of poofery as well. For example, his comment at 17 years of age to a famous Hollywood director who visited him at his retail sales job at a shoe store because the director said that every one was talking about Everett. Fitting the director for shoes Everett said to him (cheekily), “Our feet are too tiny, aren’t they? We don’t carry shoes for such delicate pixie paws.”As a slight minus for myself there is a kind of confusing episodic quality to the book. Although there is a loose chronology from youth to “now” individual chapters can be quite independent of each other. Someone who dies in one chapter can be actively alive in a later chapter, which is discombobulating. Sometimes I wanted to see the chapters diagrammed on a timeline showing exactly the periods of Everett’s life they covered. But there is really nothing inherently wrong with writing that way.He seemed quite glum on the last pages, unsure of his future. But I foresee him potentialy remaining a compelling presence well into a crotchety, grey-headed geezerdom. Bravo Rupert Everett!