We’ve all heard of funny bones but September and October are shaping up to be the ultimate funny months.

So far no fewer than four of our leading TV funnymen have started releasing their autobiographies over the last few weeks.

Paul Merton sneaked in at the end of September with Only When I laugh, national treasure Stephen Fry was next with More Fool Me – his third autobiography – while ex-Python John Cleese delighted everyone with So, Anyway.

Not to be outdone, chat show host Graham Norton has plunged in with The Life And Loves Of A He Devil which is released on October 23.

I have read the previous two volumes of Fry’s tomes, the second of which, The Fry Chronicles, was so good that it is one of only two books I have read twice.

The other, should anyone be interested, is the journalist and writer Paul Johnson’s Brief Lives – a compelling account of the many famous and influential people he has met over the years.

Inevitably, his recollections of all the august institutions where Fry snorted cocaine grabbed a lot of the media attention. Strangely, I found his confession that he took cocaine at the Daily Telegraph offices more shocking than him taking it at Buckingham Palace.

The memoir got a mauling by Fleet Street’s finest. Lynn Barber said in the Sunday Times: “The first 60 pages are a recap of his first two memoirs, the last 140 pages a chunk of his 1993 diary and he throws in an old Spectator lecture for extra padding. This memoir probably took him all of a fortnight to assemble.”

I suppose they are right but if you are a fan of his languid, Oxbridge manner you can’t stop yourself from enjoying reading this long, all-consuming, self-indulgent love affair with himself.

Cleese’s book, I think, will be the best of them all. He is not afraid to put the boot in, whether it’s his 101-year-old mother or some hapless producer getting it in the neck.

He is a genuinely fascinating character, writes beautifully and has lived enough lives for several people. He is fascinated by rage and is right that much comedy revolves around sublimated anger – hence the success of his character in Fawlty Towers.

From the chunks I’ve read so far of Graham Norton’s book it seems reasonably entertaining fare though he is several leagues away from Cleese and Fry.

Paul Merton

One of my favourite lines about alcoholics is that they are always someone who drinks more than you do. He is honest enough to admit he has attended Alcoholics Anonymous but says although he has massively overimbibed at times, like Winston Churchill said, he has taken more out of alcohol than it has out of him.

And he is not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, cheerfully confessing to unrequited love and the almost insuperable difficulties of finding love with boyfriends who aren’t jealous of his success.

Paul Merton has a running joke in Have I Got News for You about his ungraded CSE in metalwork which makes me bond with him.

I too spent several years at Fartown High School in metalwork classes and still have the wooden bookmark with a giraffe-shaped figure which I occasionally gaze at in wonder marvelling at how I managed to successfully glaze the giraffe onto it.

There is an hilarious moment when he wants to study French rather than the dreaded metalwork only to find he has to take a test in the language, which he inevitably fails as he has never studied it before.

His is an inspiring tale of an outsider, a non-Oxbridge talent, who rose to the very top.