Back Story: David Mitchell Tells The Truth

David Mitchell was always one of my favorite guests on QI, but I really came to appreciate his brand of comedy during my marathon viewing of Would I Lie To You? where he features as one of the team captains. His rants on various and sundry topics are always entertaining, and the constant needling about his supposed posh background will frequently lead to a diatribe about how everyone expects him to be sitting around in a castle stroking a pheasant. His autobiography, Back Story, provides a wonderful insight into the man behind the "posh nerd" persona, and is alternately amusing and touching.

Mitchell comes from a middle-class background but the fact that he grew up in Oxford and got a degree at Cambridge makes him seem a lot more aristocratic. His parents worked hard to give him a private school education and his stories about the schools he attended are alternately amusing and horrifying. His first school took discipline too seriously, but fortunately he went on to less draconian establishments. He was a scholarship student, fairly nerdy and eager to please. As a young kid he liked dressing up like 18th century noblemen and desperately wanted a birthday party at McDonald's - so both an eccentric and normal child then.

Like Stephen Fry, Mitchell's comedy sensibilities finally took flight at Cambridge. He was determined to join Footlights at the outset but also worked in dramatic productions for other groups. This part of his autobiography is very similar to The Fry Chronicles, including numerous trips to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, name dropping of various future comedy icons, and his partnership with Robert Webb, with whom he would go on to create the brilliant Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look. Unsurprisingly, Mitchell went on to become the President of Footlights, a role that seems to inevitably lead to fame and fortune in British comedy circles.

Of course, fame and fortune weren't instantaneous, and Mitchell and his compatriots were leading rather squalid lives after graduation. They would work as theater ushers while scribbling sketches and trying to put up strange productions of plays and comedy shows all over the UK. Mitchell got increasingly desperate as all his friends managed to land agents, and it seemed like his dreams of being a comedian were never going to go anywhere. But of course, things worked out in the end. His trajectory seems to have been slower than Stephen Fry and his colleagues, but he got there in the end and the audience can be grateful for it.

The penultimate chapter of Back Story takes an unusual turn as Mitchell discusses his love life, or lack thereof. Specifically, he tells the tale of his seemingly unrequited love for Victoria Coren. He pined for her for three years, until she called in 2010, started dating him again, and as of November 2012, became his wife. It's a sweet story, serving as the perfect bookend to a period of his life when he was consumed by his career but also desperately lonely. I don't know how much of a difference this will make to Mitchell's "lonely nerd" persona now - the other panel show contestants certainly can't make fun of him anymore for not having a girlfriend. But I suspect the onscreen character of David Mitchell will just be as ranty and pedantic as ever, thereby ensuring many more hours of television comedy gold.