In The Best Possible Taste, by David Lister (Bloomsbury, £7.99 in UK)

It's hard to imagine a biography of Kenny Everett being po-faced, but this workmanlike study comes as near as dammit - apart, of course, from the flashes of Everett wit which, even now, seems years ahead of its time. Like all great clowns Everett was a dark, tortured soul, and Lister went to enormous lengths to trace the depths of his unhappiness; excavating, in the process, a brilliant, complex talent and a child-like, sometimes objectionably childish, man.