A punk rocker’s honest take on a dead king’s comeback tour
Right, so I was not expecting to spend my Tuesday night crying with laughter on the N29 because of a book about Henry the Eighth. But here we are.
I picked up Henry Is Back because someone at a gig shoved it in my bag and said “you’ll like this, it’s got a king doing stand-up in it,” and I thought, sure, whatever, I’ll give it two pages. Four hours later the bus driver was asking if I was alright because I’d laughed so hard I’d started coughing.
The premise is daft on paper: Henry VIII reincarnated as a modern stand-up comedian, working small clubs, still furious about everything, still absolutely convinced he’s right about all of it. What actually got me was how the book uses that daftness to say something properly sharp about fame, reinvention, and blokes who never once consider they might be the problem. Sound familiar? It should. I know men exactly like this and none of them have been dead five hundred years.
The jokes land. That’s the bit I wasn’t sure about going in, because “comedy novel” so often means “not actually funny, just structured like it should be.” This one’s actually funny, properly, out loud, several times a chapter funny.
If you want the whole story and more of the comedy that this bit was pulled from, the full archive is over at Henry VIII’s own stand-up diary, which I’ve now read in one sitting, obviously.
Go get the book. Read it on a bus. Embarrass yourself.
