BLINK PUBLISHING
★★★★☆
When picking up someone’s third autobiography, it is often with a sense of ‘What can be said that we don’t already know?’, particularly when 1995’s Take It Like A Man is one of the definitive celebrity memoirs. George addresses this in the preface, explaining that maturity and wisdom offer a very different perspective on retrospection, and this becomes apparent almost immediately. Scores are undoubtedly settled, though it is himself that George is hardest on throughout, accepting responsibility and looking at things from the viewpoint of others, displaying a self-awareness he had previously lacked.
Nonetheless, Karma is a huge amount of fun, packed with both crazy characters and hilarious anecdotes. The excess of the 80s is epitomised by trips on Concorde to party in New York with Warhol treated as casually as an Uber to Wetherspoons. Close encounters of the celebrity kind are shared with candour, checking egos where needed (Janet Jackson, it turns out, was indeed Nasty to George), though told with a wink and a smile instead of the vitriolic ramblings that made previous memoir Straight so unpleasant.