This is your life - without the scandal

It may not win the Booker, but the family will love it.  Chris Middleton meets a man who helps people write their autobiographies.

Telegraph, Saturday August 30 1997

Among the recent out-pourings of biographies and autobiographies, it is quite possible that you will have missed The Wind Beneath My Wings by Shirley Martins, and Don’t Forget to Remember by Ann Davies.  The Life and Times of June Pledger and The Life Story of Stan Marsh-Blakemore may also have passed you by.

That none of these books have appeared on the shelves of Waterstones or in the review pages of the national papers is hardly suprising when you consider that fewer than half-a-dozen copies of each book were published.

As well as sharing a single-figure print run, they were all produced by the same company, Bound Biographies, which specialises in helping “ordinary” people put their life story down on paper.

The firm is run by its founder and sole full-time employee, Mike Oke, who has published 49 different sets of leather-bound memoirs.

"I don’t pretend that the book will make them rich and famous,” stresses Mike.  “In fact, the most copies we’ve ever printed is 43, and the standard number is two. I always make it clear that these books are meant for family and a few close friends.  I’m very anti the whole business of vanity publishing, whereby people are encouraged to go for big print runs and public circulation.  My books are strictly private.”

The average length of Mike’s books is 50,000 words, which can fill anything between 400 and 500 pages, depending on how many illustrations are used.  Many contain reproductions of everyday items like school reports and seaside postcards, alongside pictures of more portentous moments such as weddings and christenings.

What does not differ, though, is the way the books are written - which involves Mike making monthly tours of inspection round his author’s homes.

Once there, he not only presents them with typed-up versions of their most recent chapters, but he also employs a range of techniques designed to jog the memory and generally stimulate the creative process.

He begins with basic questions such as,

"Who did you sit next to at school?” and “What was the name of the nearest grocery shop when you were a child?” to more spirit-of-the-times posers such as “What did ITMA stand for?” (It’s That Man Again) or “What night was Amami night?”

(Answer: Friday - Amami shampoo used to sponsor and end-of-week radio shows).  And if all else fails, he will play recordings of songs that were hits around the time in question.

Halfway through writing her biography, 74-year-old Jean Dudley suddenly lost confidence in her work.

"I got this feeling that no one would be remotely interested in my life story,” said Mrs Dudley.  “I was all set to pack it in, but Mike was very kind and gave me the encouragement and confidence to carry on. Now my book has been published.  I’m very glad I did it.  First of all, I’ve got a huge amount of satisfaction out of doing something I never thought I’d be able to do.  Also, I think it will be rather nice for my children and grandchildren. I know from my own point of view there’s always so many things you wish you’d asked your parents.  And it’s all gone forever if it’s not written down.”

Significantly, Mike does not encourage his authors to tell the whole, unexpurgated story.

"One gentleman,” says Mike, “rather prided himself on being a ladies’ man, and was keen to feature some of his conquests.  When I asked him if he really thought his close family would want to read that kind of material, he could see the sense of leaving it out.”

Another client wrote seven chapters about being in the RAF and hardly anything about his wife.  Mike suggested that he might like to redress the balance a bit.

"Because we don’t have to sell thousands of copies, we can afford to steer round some of the more difficult areas, rather than spicing them up. One lady had a husband who used to hit her, and at one stage they split up.  In the book we just say that she went back to live with her mother for a while.  People who are aware of the background will already know why that was, so there is no need to be any more explicit, is there?”

In Mike’s experience, female autobiographers are far more expansive than males.

"Women write from the heart,” he says.  “Men tend to write about what they would like people to read.  One of my customers, called John, included the model number of his hi-fi system and the dimensions of the bricks he used to build his barbecue. “At first, I felt that we ought to take out that kind of detail, but then I thought ‘No, that wouldn’t be John’ - so we left it in.”

Being in charge of Bound Biographies is clearly more to Mike’s taste than his two previous careers - in computers and banking.

"Initially, I thought doing this job would be a matter of just ghost-writing.  In fact, because most of my customers are over 55, they have all been schooled in the art of letter-writing, and are practised at putting their thoughts down on paper. “Rather than doing the writing for them, I play a variety of roles from editor to secretary, from friend to bully.”

Mike’s services cost authors anything between £2,000 and £3,500.  For this they get a free initial interview, at least eight monthly visits, and two bound copies of the finished, printed product.  As well as getting a load off their chests, writers often find they get a weight off their shoulders, too.

Ann Davies contacted Mike initially because she needed help writing a book about the illness that had killed her husband.

Mike told me very gently that in itself this did not constitute a book,” says Mrs Davies.  “He suggested that I might like to include some of the happy times that my husband and I had enjoyed.  I found that putting it down on paper helped me get over my husband’s death.”

Authors find that as well as opening doors to the future, writing one’s life story can lift a dust sheet off long-forgotten manuscripts.

"I remember one lady talking about the house she lived in as a girl, and every time she said the word ‘pantry’, she sniffed,” says Mike. “When I asked her about this, she said she wasn’t conscious of doing it - but then remembered that the pantry was where they used to keep the meat, in the days before refrigeration, and that every time her mother opened the pantry door, she always used to sniff the door to see if the meat was off. “It was a small thing in itself, but it opened up this whole wealth of very vivid memories that would have been lost. “Another elderly gentleman told me how, as a little boy, he used to be upset because the moon always shone on his brother’s bed, not his. “His brother had told him that this was because the moon only shone on boys who were good.  Then one night George woke up and the moon was shining on him - and he just felt so special and proud. “This was something which happened 60 years ago in the middle of the night, and which he had never told a living soul before.  But you only had to look at the smile on his face to see the pleasure it gave him.”

Sometimes, of course, the memories are not so happy.

One of Mike’s authors records how, as a church sidesman, he was wrongly accused of pocketing the Sunday collection; as a result the whole town boycotted his grocery store, and he went bankrupt.  Another writer tells how for years she went to elaborate lengths to hide from her bank colleagues the fact that despite his Anglo-Saxon name, her husband Bob was actually black.

"My philosophy is that everyone has a story to tell,” says Mike.  “It may not be of any interest to outsiders, but more often than not, it will be a source of uplift for family and close friends. “At the very least, it will make children sit up and say ‘Gosh - my parents had lives, too!"