Nerd Do Well
ISBN: 9781846058110
Description
Zombies in North London, death cults in the West Country, the engineering deck of the Enterprise: actor, comedian, writer and self-proclaimed supergeek Simon Pegg has been ploughing some bizarre furrows in recent times. Having blasted on to the small screen in the gut-busting and now legendary sitcom Spaced, his enduring appeal and rise to nation's-favourite-son status has been mercurial, meteoric, megatronic, but mostly just plain great.
From his childhood (and subsequently adult) obsession with science fiction, his enduring friendship with Nick Frost, and his forays into stand-up comedy which began with his regular Monday morning slot in front of his twelve-year-old classmates, Simon has always had a severe and dangerous case of the funnies.
Reviewed on 25th January 2011
In this autobiography, Simon Pegg, star and writer of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and of course the new Scotty in Star Trek, tells the story of his life so far, and another, more random and probably fictitious, story in which he is a superhero with a robot butler.
This is very much a book of Pegg's life rather than a memoir of his career. The focus is very much on Pegg's influences and how he came to be then man he is, and there is very little in the way of anecdotes about his work. The two most obvious obsessions are Star Wars and zombies, both of which he talks about a lot. The book could almost be the story of how 'Shaun' came to be - that is the element of Pegg's work that receives the most page time, and readers who are only interested in his Trek connection will be disappointed by his bare mention of it.
The tone is surprisingly candid, with Pegg exploring much of his childhood and early relationships, as well as that which he had with the screen. While there is a lot of name dropping, it's not done in an egotistical 'look who I had dinner with' way, but more of a geeky 'omg I met... Wow!'.
I've enjoyed the time I've spent reading this, and I think anyone who is a fan of Pegg's comedy work will feel the same. Especially zombies.