After writing about his childhood and tempestuous teenage years in his first autobiography, Moab is my Washpot, the second in what is hopefully a continuing series discusses his shot at redemption, reinvention and success in the early 1980s.

At Cambridge, still on probation from credit card fraud but discovering that he could sail through examinations, he befriends Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson and finds that it is his extra-curricular activities that prove far more interesting than Shakespearean texts. His deliciously wordy and self-deprecating writing style allows you to hear his deep and melodious tones and figuratively curl up on the sofa as Fry shares with us what was probably the happiest time of his life, fumbling, bumbling, hilarious and tentative.

Despite this happiness – or in spite of it – he is brutally honest about his private miseries even as his own star was beginning to shine. “I had lived twenty years convinced that my body was the enemy and that all I had going for me was my brain, my quickness of tongue and my blithe facility with language, attributes that can cause people to be as much disliked as admired.”

Whilst coming out to his family was one of love and instant support on all sides, the hatred of his own appearance and body affected much of his projected confident public persona. The gay disco scene, in particular, was damning: “There can be no disputing the misery caused by those hard eyes running up and down my body for a scorchingly humiliating instant before flicking away with contempt towards the next person coming through the door.”

He readily admits that his upbringing and those of most Cambridge friends were ones of privilege, comfort and class and urges us to be kind. University, in his view, is the time to be indulgent, creative and experimental. It is the mark of his talents as a writer and observer that we do, in fact, envy his time there.

To accept that this book covers a mere decade of his life – with many aspects still veiled - does not smack of vanity but of a fascinating life and perspective. We readers find ourselves readily liking and identifying with him despite not being as brilliantly intelligent, successful, respected or wealthy. Fry says it best himself: “The sense of failure, the fear of eternal unhappiness, the insecurity, misery, self-disgust and the awful awareness of underachievement... Are you not prey to all of those things also? I do hope so. I would feel the most conspicuous oddity otherwise.”