Mortification

Mark Watson is a national treasure Richard Osman

Whatever I now know about life - or think I know - I found out through failure, disappointment, mortification. Im writing it all down as much to remind myself as for anyone else - but now youre here, Id love you to stick around . . .

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet hes died many times. Not just on stage - though hell tell you about that - but in other ways, too. Theres been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all . . .

Eye-opening, revealing and painfully funny, this is a book about mortification, failure and all the times life doesnt work out as planned. But it also wisely questions whether the things we strive for - recognition, success, the approval of others - are really the things that matter. Its a book about death that reminds us how to live.

Mark Watson makes the base metal of failure into comedy gold Adam Kay