FROM MOHAIR SUITS TO KINKY BOOTS

'From Mohair Suits to Kinky Boots is to London's east end as early Mamet is to Chicago. Your morning coffee WILL come out of your nose repeatedly' - George Wendt (Norm from Cheers). 'The Samuel Pepys of East London.' - Maurice Gran. As the lead singer of Modern Romance he toured the world, as the screenwriter of Kinky Boots he conquered Hollywood, now comes Geoff Deane's latest act as a quite brilliant and witty raconteur in his hilarious memoir. Geoff has been a fly-pitcher working out of a suitcase and flogged suits on Brick Lane market in London's East End. He was the singer in a much-loved culty punk band the Leyton Buzzards, a floppy-haired pop star in Modern Romance, a songwriter, and record producer. He wrote a gay anthem for John Waters' drag queen muse Divine, worked as journalist and restaurant critic for style magazines The Face and Arena, before becoming a successful writer and producer of TV comedy. And then he wrote a couple of films, one of which, Kinky Boots, became a Tony Award-winning Broadway stage show. This is the tale of life lived large, a collection of uproarious and often moving stories from Geoff's youth as a clothes-obsessed Jewish suedehead, hanging out in Tottenham dancehalls, via straight Bowie Boy frequenting London's gay clubs, gender confusion in Manhattan's Studio 54, and on to huge career success as a screenwriter. With a cast ranging from local oddballs to international celebrities, Geoff Deane's unique take on the world is only matched by his extraordinarily rich use of language, with a smattering of Cockney rhyming slang, Yiddish and Polari. "For most of the day you wouldn't see Alf. You'd just hear his unmistakable rasp emerging from behind a dense cloud of cigarette smoke. A one-man Chernobyl in a tux that had seen better days." With hilarious chapter titles like "Even androgynous creatures of the night are prone to painful wardrobe injuries" and "Bad news, bad Jews and a handjob." With useful glossary, a real blast from the past. 264 pages.