This autobiography of the man who created the Reginald Perrin recounts how he was catapulted into the world of satire at the BBC when he rang "That Was the Week that Was" with a joke and got through to David Frost, who sent a taxi for the joke and later one for Nobbs himself. He never looked back. "I Didn't Get Where I am Today" is David Nobb's story, which captures a golden age of British television and describes some of the most famous comedians of the last century, including: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, the Pythons, Jimmy Tarbuck, Frankie Howard, the TW3 team and many more.

Prizes

Shortlisted for Saga Award for Wit 2003.

Nobbs's impish sense of humour pervades his self-mocking autobiography, recounting his wartime childhood and a search for identity that would have befitted his best-known creation: The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Bullying and male rape while at public school were hardly a preparation to become a TV comic writer but glimpses of the satirist start to emerge at Cambridge and during a turgid spell in journalism. The material available for preview stretches only as far as the early 1960s when sketches for David Frost in That Was The Week That Was proved to be his breakthrough, with the envelopes of material collected by black cab from Hampstead Magistrates' Court where he was a reporter. A treat for aficionados of the golden age of satire.

David Nobbs was born in Kent. After university, he entered the army, then tried his hand at journalism and advertising before becoming a writer. A distinguished novelist and comedy writer, he lives near Harrogate with his wife Susan.