Stand Up, Barry Goldman

Author: David J. Cohen

This coming-of-age novel explores the early days of alternative comedy, itself growing from the late 1970s punk revolution. Deals with racism, feminism, growing up Jewish in England and the rise of Margaret Thatcher. And jokes. Lots of jokes.

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All I'd wanted for as long as I could remember was a woman to love, a soulmate to live with in contentment for the rest of my days: friend, lover, companion, mother to our children.

Time was running out: I was getting old. Next year I would be eighteen.

Barry Goldman is a sensitive boy. He's being primed to run the family business but has discovered a talent for making audiences laugh at his silly poems.

At last, he has found something that might make him attractive to girls - in particular, Harriet Fink - but there's not much call for delicate, earnest poets in the 1970s comedy world of hot-panted dolly birds and battle-axe mothers-in-law.

Then one night he sees Kris Dean on a stage in Edinburgh and understands that the world of comedy is about to change forever.

Stand Up, Barry Goldman - like Elena Ferrante, but with jokes - is the debut novel of David J. Cohen, stand-up comedian and writer best known as the creator of dozens of songs for multi-BAFTA winning hit TV show Horrible Histories, and less well known as lead singer in the world's first Jewish heavy metal band, Guns'n'Moses.

"Funny and fascinating, a lovely tale" Jo Brand

"Powerfully funny, often moving... Dave has created the Jewish Adrian Mole of alternative comedy." David Quantick

"In the last anxiety-making days of lockdown Dave made me laugh out loud from the first few pages. This novel about the world of stand-up comedy is funnier than the real thing." Linda Grant

"Evokes all the tension of doing your first Edinburgh Fringe but without incurring the life-changing overdraft" Jack Dee