Anyone who has seen Guy Martin documentaries on tv, should know what to expect from this no holds barred autobiography. It covers his childhood up to about 2014, when he was becoming well-known on tv and cutting back on racing, but not truck mechanics. Late in the book he is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which to an extent explains his character. An entertaining read, but be prepared for plenty of minutiae about motorbikes! ( )

Guy is a normal down to earth man who tells his story from childhood to now.This was a really enjoyable read. ( )

Guy is a normal down to earth man who tells his story from childhood to now.This was a really enjoyable read. ( )

I bought this last week because I needed a book to complete a special offer on a bunch of books I was buying. I have watched some of the Guy Martin stuff on TV and I also watched TT-3D when it came out which features him quite heavily. He comes across as a likeable chap in the mold of Fred Dibnah and it helps that I tend to watch the Isle of Man TT every year. A few people at work have read this book and they all said that I should read it at some point as they really enjoyed it.

The book follows are a pretty formulaic autobiography approach, starting with Martin's younger days and then progressing on to the modern day. The stuff about his younger days is actually quite interesting because he had a bit of an unusual upbringing. He spent a lot of his time fixing up and working on engines that people in the village no longer wanted. This, coupled with his fathers truck maintenance business evolved into Martin having a lifelong interest in all things mechanical. His father was also a bike racer but it took a long while for Martin to get into racing despite his love of motorbikes.

As I expected, there is a pretty comprehensive record of his races, particularly the road races that he has competed in. Here I found my first issue with Guy Martin, pretty much everything is someone else's fault. He is very quick to blame team mechanics and managers for not giving him the equipment he wants in the way he wants. He is also very keen to point out that he hates doing PR work and pretty much refuses to do it. To me, if you are working for a race team who are providing you with a bike costing up to £200k then there has to be some give and take. Not everyone can have the best bike and things do go wrong in racing, it is the nature of the sport. If I'm perfectly honest, Martin comes across as a bit of a prat in the book. He was also allowed to keep his driving licence after amassing 21 points (12 is an instant ban in most cases) which particularly irked me. When he talks about this he effectively refuses to accept that it's his fault and shows little remorse.

In the end, I won't rate the book on the likeability or otherwise of Guy Martin but on the quality of the book as a whole. It doesn't stand up well here either. The writing is ok but nothing more than that and I found some parts of it pretty poor and slow going. I didn't hate it, it was ok, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they are a huge fan. ( )

They say you should never meet your heroes. On the basis of this book, it might be a good idea not to read their biographies, either.

The plus points for this book are that it is pure Guy Martin, written pretty much exactly as he would speak; and it is a very honest book, from the subject's perspective. But I hate to say, it does make him seem a bit of a sod, and not such the affable character he appears on the TV. Plus, I don't know whether it's just the Kindle copy, or the print version too, but my Kindle version could certainly have done with a lot more proof-reading! ( )