American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

The shift in my alcohol intake was noticed by others. I never used to drink before a show, but now I had to have a beer or three just to settle my nerves. There was a kind of panic that stalked me nearly all the time. As long as I was occupied by drumming or dancing or listening to very loud music or doing drugs or having sex or, of course, drinking, then I felt okay, but as soon as I was left with no money or opportunity to get out of myself, I would feel the terror creeping up. I felt that I might go completely insane at any moment. I couldn't sleep unless I was drunk, and when I did pass out I was tormented by awful dreams. Decapitations and stabbings and mutilations. One nightmare rolled around every few days. I would be walking toward Buchanan Street bus station in Glasgow on a clear day and see, in the distance, the unmistakable shape of a mushroom cloud forming in the clear blue sky. I was seeing the end of the world twice a week. Then, for a few hours, or a even few days, it would stop. Just like that. I did sleep, I didn't drink with quite the same urgency, and I began to feel a little more human. It returned just as abruptly. I would never know when the terror would strike. In a car, on a bus, in bed. Sometimes I would wake up screaming. I knew something lived inside me that was out of my control. It could be sedated and calmed with alcohol, but one of the side effects of that particular medicine was that when I sobered up, the panic would be worse. A very vicious circle. I have been asked many times since then why I didn't seek help, but the truth is, I didn't really know what was wrong with me. I thought, "This is just who I am, a terrorized man, a lunatic, a neurotic," and thought the only way through was to try to maintain some outward semblance of normalcy or else I'd be locked up forever in a padded cell. Internally, I lived in almost constant panic.

All of these individuals were hugely influential in British comedy, and I felt tremendously uncomfortable around them, assuming that they looked down on me for not attending a swanky school or being from the "right" family, but I see now that that was hogwash. If anyone was unfairly prejudiced it was me--I had a chip on my shoulder because of my background. I didn't want anybody's fucking help or influence. I was better than them because I was, I don't know, Scottish, or angry, or something. Also, I didn't know how to behave around these rather brilliant people who treated me with tact and charm and sympathy, not because they feared me, which is what I told myself at the time, but because they loved Helen and knew she loved me. These people came from the privileged English middle and upper classes, they were the very people I'd grown up believing were the enemy, yet here I was among them, even living with one of them. And they had no problem with it. I was the one in conflict.

Ferguson is somewhat perversely proud that the only academic credential he every attained (never having completed even high school) was a wine-tasting certificate. His writing style tends to betray this. The text is a little too plain-speaking, falls back on the crutches of profanity a little too often and chapters are sometime brief and end abruptly to the point of absurdity. However, the often fantastical personal anecdotes rarely fail to be self-conscious with Ferguson often openly saying: I couldn’t believe it either! The tales also seem to lack a personal agenda, at least none can be inferred from someone willingly admitting they wet the bed until they were 29 years old.

In short, the book gets a mild recommendation largely because it sets of the back story for when Ferguson eventually and inevitable fucks up his current marriage, stardom or sobriety. It appears he has not done anything truly self-destructive in about six year so it should be quite the blast when it happens.