White Male Stand-Up

By: Alan Davies

Narrated by: Alan Davies

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.©2025 Alan Davies

Critic reviews

'Reading White Male Stand-up made me nostalgic for the 90s/00s. I could feel the strong friendships and also the pain. Alan Davies is so perceptive on the drive to success and the seeking of an alternate family. This book is emotional, entertaining and startlingly honest. I was totally engrossed.' (Amy Liptrot)

'Davies has done it again, damn him. Irritatingly good. Maddeningly funny. Annoyingly fine.' (Stephen Fry)

'Really honest and really funny' (Lorraine Kelly)

'An unvarnished account of his life...often amusing in its brutal honesty'

A simply astonishing achievement. The quality, depth, emotional power and terrifying honesty of Alan Davies's story-telling take the breath away (Stephen Fry on Just Ignore Him)

'An unvarnished account of his life...often amusing in its brutal honesty'

Perfect followup to Just Ignore Him

This book by and about Alan Davies offers a very complex picture of a person I have admired for well over 25 years now. If you haven't read his book Just Ignore Him, do that before reading this one. If you have a normal, healthy amount of empathy, I think you'll have a better understanding of your fellow man, children, human behaviour, your own feelings as well as public persons after reading these books. Thinking back, I wouldn't say that it's a particularly funny book, but incredibly gripping - and that makes the few punchlines and comical moments all the more poignant. These books should be obligatory reading - I was going to say 'for men', - but I think I mean for everyone.

more like a letter;

I loved every bit of this. I finished it in two days. I was reading it at any given moment, listening to it on my train rides and in my drawing classes. Throughout this Odussesia of mine, you were the most comfortable company. Experiencing something this honest was so refreshing. I had my sessions of mental health struggles over the past years, and maybe things would have been easier with more open and understanding people around me, so thinking about how you care about the subject makes me smile. Thank you, you and your book is a treasure and it felt like a safe chat with a friend.

[ps: I also went to see Think Ahead in Wimbledon (on my own, from Hungary; that is how mad i am), and it was obviously brilliant!]