So Far, So Good, by Paul Eddington (Coronet, £6.99 in UK)

Paul Eddington (of course you know who he is - remember Jerry in The Good Life and Jim Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister?) is by turns hilarious, irritating and moving in this repeat episode of his 50 year long career on stage and screen. Hilarious when he is recalling, say, the time he was required to direct a production of Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular in Rome without a word of Italian other than half remembered instructions from music lessons; irritating when he tries, as he sometimes does, too hard to be funny; moving in his brisk depiction of his developing skin cancer. It's hard to credit that the IRA really tried to blow him up in Belfast even if as he claims here, The Irish Times told him so equally, it's hard to dislike a man who calls his autobiography after the encouraging words offered to him backstage at the Chichester Festival Theatre by a small boy from the local cathedral school.