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Books

The harrowing, inspiring life of Andrew Sachs

A review of Andrew Sachs' I Know Nothing! Faulty Towers' punchline of a waiter – and Russell Brand's favoured target – endured much greater sorrows with style

15 March 2014

9:00 AM

15 March 2014

9:00 AM

I Know Nothing! Andrew Sachs

The Robson Press, pp.317, £20, ISBN: 9781849546362

Comedians always like to claim that they started making jokes after childhoods made harsh by poverty; that at a formative age they were tormented by appalling cruelty and neglect. Griff Rhys Jones had to leave Wales at the age of six days, for instance. Nevertheless, the Chaplin family could afford a maid in Kennington.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £16.00, Tel: 08430 600033. Roger Lewis is the author of The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Charles Hawtrey and Growing Up with Comedians.

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