I never thought the day would come that I only gave two stars out of five to a Stephen Fry book. And yet, here we are. I immensely enjoyed his first two volumes of memoirs, Moab is my Washpot and The Fry Chronicles. More Fool Me is, sadly, by no means up to that standard.

My main complaint would be that this memoir feels lazy. The first sixty or so pages are devoted to rehashing the material of Moab and the Chronicles, to get new readers up to scratch. And the final 120 or so pages are diary entries from 1993, copied verbatim. That means only about half of the book is filled with actual new material.

The diary entries feel especially lazy. Fry explains their exclusion as being better equipped to give an impression of his daily (and nightly) exploits than his memory can. A point of accuracy, apparently. While, for me, accuracy is not the point of a memoir at all! I want reflection, connecting the dots, getting a real sense of someone's life and emotional state at the time. Not over a hundred pages of an awful lot of cocaine, visits to the Groucho club, and hanging about with famous people (Fry namedrops like it's going out of style).

Maybe this all could be forgiven if the sparse new material did provide this, but again, I was disappointed. There were a lot of references to material covered in The Fry Chronicles (dude you've already rehashed that for sixty odd pages AND I own it, stop trying to get me to buy it) and some expounding on the virtues and vices of cocaine. Very little on his actual work, feelings, or how that influenced him later on.

I can only hope a fourth volume will be up to Fry's usual standard again. Or that there won't be a fourth volume at all. After More Fool Me, I honestly don't know which scenario I'd prefer...