Travels with Gladys

Life as a cultural hybrid can leave you with a hollow sense of loneliness, a constant ache to "belong" somewhere

Life as a cultural hybrid can leave you with a hollow sense of loneliness, a constant ache to "belong" somewhere. Born in Denmark, Sandi Toksvig spent six years living in New York state while her journalist father - a Dane married to an Englishwoman - was posted there, and spent one of those years, the 9th grade, at her local high school in Mamoroneck, New York.

During this year, which she believed was her happiest ever, she was introduced to theatre while cast as one of the three Gladyses.

Nearly 30 years and a successful television and writing career later, Toksvig lets her friend Richard persuade her to track down the other Gladyses in what was to become The Gladys Society - a Personal American Journey. Aptly named, this book - at turns poignant and laugh-out-loud funny - charts not only Toksvig's geographical trek but also her search for her true self, the essence she believed dwelled in the memory of Gladysdom.

Ever since her parents sent her to an English boarding school, she had regarded herself as out-of-place in Britain and felt her true home was the US. The jolt of returning to geographic reality, so removed from the spiritual home she yearned for, gave her the priceless gift of knowing herself: "With a sudden lurch I realised that I had not had the best time in my life as a member of the Gladys Society, but was actually having it now . . . Going back had allowed me to close one chapter and look ahead to the next. I was not defined by a country."

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Having sussed in boarding school that humour dispels desolation and attracts human contact, she couples her comic talent with her unique style - both English and Scandinavian, yet something beyond both - to tease out the ridiculous in every situation. In Georgia, she visits a flea market where she could buy a "touch lamp" that lights up to illuminate the Last Supper "in an amber glow", and her own gravestone on the "lay away plan" - including free lettering. The staggering choice at feeding places and the fat content of the food - and those eating it - provide fodder for many a glib observation.

Then again, the ridiculous darkens to the sinister when exposing foolishness and hypocrisy. "I realised that it is not anthrax that will kill the nation but cholesterol. Perhaps the Taliban have actually gone into catering." When Toksvig asks a Gladys would she not like to ask those in the Middle East why they hate the US so much, she hears, "There's no talking to those people. They don't believe in anything." End of conversation.

A founder member of the Comedy Store Players and involved in myriad comedy programmes on British television, Toksvig slices through absurdity with incisive wit. Her acid comments and quotes on "Dubya" alone are worth the read; her spin on 9/11 fresh, provocative, unencumbered by politically-correct ballast. As being PC is the biggest pitfall for a comic, Toksvig has learnt to strike pure and true. And if she can be entertaining along the way, so much the better.

Christine Madden is a journalist and critic

The Gladys Society. By Sandi Toksvig. Little, Brown. 306 pp, £16.99 sterling