Agent Palmer

You may or may not know David Mitchell from Peep Show, Would I Lie To You or one of his many other panel show appearances, or he may be someone you know absolutely nothing about, but neither knowing him nor not knowing him should deter you from reading his back story in his autobiography David Mitchell: Back Story: A Memoir.

What Mitchell has written is perhaps the most authentic and self-critical autobiography I have, and may ever, read. It’s refreshing in that way, because he’s not afraid to take the piss out of the industry he’s in or, most often, himself.

When people say, “I just don’t get into sport” it really doesn’t matter what sport you’re trying to get them into or to watch or experience. Often, there’s little you can do to get them to give it a chance. You may inevitably counter them with the point that sport, in almost any and every form is more than just the sum of its parts, and that’s the main reason that people enjoy watching it.

Most of the time, it’s the things that happen off the field, off the track, off the court, that build and bleed onto those places to enrich the drama of the athletic contest.

Recorded in 1981 and released on September 30, 1982 as the third single on Toto’s fourth studio album Toto IV, “Africa,” has gone from hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1983 to its current place in popular culture as a meme. Not being lost but being beloved during the course of that journey.

Now, I’ll admit that a friend of mine who remains steadfast that Hold the Line is the better song, which I respectfully disagree with, because it’s more of the I don’t want to go with the crowd pick.