White Male Stand-Up

On the Waterstones Best Books of 2025 List

'Davies has done it again, damn him. Irritatingly good. Maddeningly funny. Annoyingly fine.' STEPHEN FRY

'Emotional, entertaining and startlingly honest. I was totally engrossed.' AMY LIPTROT, author of The Outrun.

'Really honest and really funny' Lorraine Kelly

Following Just Ignore Him, the bestselling memoir of his traumatic childhood, White Male Stand-Up is what happened next to Alan Davies.

It's the story of how he threw himself into the joyous and idealistic world of stand-up comedy, leading to a television career, but how echoes from the past, and the thought that everyone might prefer it if he disappeared, saw him repeatedly dismantle everything around him.

With a cast of well-known comedians, actors, agents and producers, Alan awkwardly navigates his life from the camaraderie of the comedy circuit via life-changing fame as TV's Jonathan Creek, to the unwelcome realisation that most people know him from a bank advert and think he's had a perm.

Often very funny and always honest, this very personal memoir is a rich tale of uplifting highs and painful lows, of success and excess, and the dangers of both. How Alan Davies survived it - and very nearly didn't - is the compelling tale of White Male Stand Up.