Not That I’m Bitter by Helen Lederer review – funny lessons from the comedy fringe

Funny woman Helen Lederer honed her craft doing standup on the alternative comedy circuit of the 1980s, sharing bills with the likes of Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Jenny Eclair, before landing roles in sitcoms including Girls on Top and Absolutely Fabulous. Since then, she’s appeared in reality TV shows, pantos, ads. There have also been books, this latest of which strives to explain why, when so many of her contemporaries went on to become household names, Lederer herself still requires an introduction.

A hectic, now-and-again hair-raising survey of her life and career, it begins with a mother who worked at Bletchley during the war only to become trapped by 1950s domesticity, and a Czech-Jewish father who arrived in the UK as a refugee and continually felt the need to earn his place in British society.

Growing up in suburban Eltham, south-east London, Lederer depicts herself as an asthmatic show-off, prone to spilling her milk in hysterics. As she stumbles into young adulthood, there are disturbing episodes as a trainee masseuse and the recipient of after-hours “lessons” from her acting coach.

Certainly, these were different times, which also accounts for the speed pills she takes for dieting and, perhaps, the lack of camaraderie she encounters among female comedians, still few in number back then. Competing with men became harder still after she became a single mother.

She’s always in the right place at the wrong time, doing a “singleton” act, for instance, a decade before the advent of Bridget Jones. When she does contrive to be in the right place at the right time, she manages to self-sabotage. Reflecting on it from the “autumn” of her career, mortification and regret remain in plentiful supply, but what she genuinely doesn’t evince, her book’s title notwithstanding, is bitterness.

To the extent that Lederer has gained any insight with age and experience, she’s able to see that the sense of not being good enough that has dogged her from childhood is also what drives her to perform. Without it, she might be happier – more successful, possibly – but she’d also never have known the “bliss” that comes from creating laughter in an audience in the first place.

Here is a narrative that is, above all, irrepressibly, unrepentantly funny. This can feel jarring on occasion yet her defence is important – even more so now than when she started out, despite the many changes for the better. As she insists at the end: “Making fun of the bad stuff, and caring about the bad stuff, can be done at the same time.”

• Not That I’m Bitter by Helen Lederer is published by Mirror Books (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply