Humorist, sexual adventurer, crack addict and pimp: whatever else Willie Donaldson was – and there were many other escapades along the way – he certainly wasn’t dull. Best known as the creator of the infamous Henry Root letters, which began a trend for deflating the pomposity of celebrities that has since been continued by satirists such as Chris Morris and Sacha Baron Cohen, Donaldson led a fascinatingly unusual life.
Born to a distant, shy father and a flamboyant mother, he inherited fortune after fortune, which he inevitably squandered, and attempted a career as an impresario before the literary world beckoned.
Terence Blacker, a long-standing friend and co-writer of Donaldson’s, takes a broadly sympathetic view of his life, never afraid to point out his especially heinous misdeeds, but perceptive on the way in which Donaldson would produce fine comic ideas seemingly out of nowhere. A wide number of friends and colleagues, such as Craig Brown, Sebastian Horsley and a testy Jonathan Miller, testify to a man for whom bankruptcy and disgrace were occupational hazards. There could be slightly more detail about some of the fascinating people featured, but this is a minor caveat in a splendidly entertaining romp through a life misled.
