When it comes to celebrity memoirs, the final chapters are generally the ones that hold the least mystery for readers. Usually, we already know what they will contain: the success, the fame, the substance abuse, the recovery, the triumphant ending. It is the lesser known early years that are more revealing, the ones played out away from the public eye.
In the case of David Mitchell's autobiography, Back Story, this does not apply. Without wishing to denigrate a man's life, Mitchell's path to glory is not all that mysterious: the peaceful childhood in Oxford, the happy university years at Cambridge as part of the Footlights, the relatively painless segue into writing comedy, Peep Show glory and, finally, the inevitable transition into being a near ubiquitous presence on panel shows, and without any substance abuse either.
Nothing about Mitchell's life has seemed all that surprising from the outside – until earlier this year. Back in March, it was announced that Mitchell was engaged to fellow Observer columnist and TV presenter Victoria Coren. The general reaction was one of astonishment, which is why, when Mitchell's book landed on my desk, I turned straight to the last chapters.
It turns out he wasn't entirely telling the truth. It wasn't that he didn't know how to have a relationship; he was heartbroken. In 2007, he went to a film premiere and met "funny, bright, sexy, nervous and confident" Coren and, "pretty instantly", he knew. After a few dates, though, she ended it: her father had just died, she might have just met someone else, the timing was bad and so on. For the first time in his life, being alone made Mitchell feel lonely. As chance would have it, this period coincided with his rocketing public profile and interviewers began asking questions about his love life. So he played up the persona of the "dysfunctional loser" to keep enquiries at bay. But playing that role became, he admits today, "increasingly painful". And then Coren came back.
On an overcast afternoon in a photographer's studio in east London, I find Mitchell munching, without much enthusiasm, on a shop-bought sandwich. While every other male in Hoxton seems to be wearing a vintage T-shirt and jeans, Mitchell, 38, sports a defiantly untrendy jacket-and-trouser combination. He looks, in short, exactly how one would expect. With his slightly nervous manner, his sentences starting off hesitant as he mentally constructs a perfectly crafted argument or self-deprecating joke, he comes across in person just as he does on the many panel shows he populates. Except that now there is an air of contentment, a sense of comfort in his own skin.
