Jokes, Jokes, Jokes: My Very Funny Memoir

*Nominated for Best Book at the 2025 Chortle Awards*

’Really funny & engaging. A breeze and a pleasure to read’ Katherine Ryan
’As hilarious and outrageous as you might expect’ Rosie Ramsey
’Funny. Poignant. Fascinating. Just the sort of hilarious, disrespectful, ribald book I love to get stuck into’ Jo Brand

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How did little Jenny Hargreaves become Jenny Eclair and elbow her way into the male dominated world of 1980s stand-up?

Daughter of Major Derek Hargreaves (spy?) and June Hargreaves (spy’s wife?) sister of Sara (born to be Head Girl) and Ben (the usurper), Jenny’s comedy career took off via drama school, cider, sausage rolls, sleeping with men who looked like they lived under a carpet, punk poetry, anorexia, bedsit misery, waitressing and not really having a clue about anything.

This was a world before microphones, mobile phones, before everyone gave up smoking or started taking coke. Jenny Eclair was on the comedy circuit before there really was a comedy circuit and was the first woman to win the Perrier Award along the way.

Still gigging to sell-out crowds forty years later, Jenny Eclair’s memoir charts her childhood, her career and the changing face of women in comedy, all told with hilarious brilliance in Jokes, Jokes, Jokes, her very funny memoir.

MORE PRAISE FOR JOKES, JOKES, JOKES

’’Laugh out loud and moved to tears. Highly recommended’ Josie Lawrence
’Rude, honest and funny’ Dom Joly
’I love this book!’ Helen Lederer
’A tonic for the soul’ Jennie Godfrey
’Hilarious’ Julian Clary
’You’ll love it!’ Anthea Turner

Jenny Eclair was the first female winner of the Edinburgh Festival’s Perrier Comedy Award in 1995. She now presents a weekend talk show on LBC and regularly appears on Radio 4’s Just a Minute quiz. She has appeared on BBC2’s Grumpy Old Women, and starred in the sell-out stage-show Grumpy Old Women Live co-written with Judith Holder.