THE SUNDAY REVIEW | BETWEEN THE STOPS – SANDI TOKSVIG

Sandi Toksvig is a legend. She has lived an amazingly interesting life, she is hilarious, smart, knowledgeable and has a voice I could listen to for days. (I have, actually.) She is not only a writer, but a comedian, a former presenter of The Great British Bake Off, and took over as host of notorious British quiz show, QI, when Stephen Fry left. Not many people would have dared to step into his shoes, and even fewer could have pulled it off. Sandi Toksvig did both. She also created one of my favourite podcasts during the lockdown days of the pandemic that helped me deal with the stress of that time, but that has also helped me during difficult times since. She’s someone I admire, aspire to be like, and who I find incredibly interesting.

This memoir, similar to Toksvig herself, doesn’t follow the format of a typical memoir. She doesn’t start with her birth, move through her childhood, then adulthood, her entry into comedy and performing and then up to the present day. What she does instead is ride the bus. Yes, literally. She gets on the Number 12 bus near her house, and rides it through London to her workplace at the BBC. She does this partly because it’s free, but also because she loves London. She loves finding her favourite seat (hopefully empty), seeing who she’s sharing the ride with, observing and musing on the behaviour (and conversations) of the people around her, and looking out the window. Many of the stories she tells begin with a landmark she sees through the window, or something she knows is near her route. These give her an opportunity to share some of her vast knowledge of history, to share stories in particular of women who either have or – more likely – haven’t been celebrated.

But as she does this, she does also look back through her life. We do get to learn about her childhood. Her father was a Danish TV news presenter in the early days of TV in Denmark. Her father became the first overseas news correspondent for the country, which meant she, her brother and her mother spent a lot of her childhood in America – often bouncing from hotel to hotel while randomly showing up at important historical moments (she was at the actual take off for the first spaceship to land on the moon, and heard the broadcast while holding the hand of Neil Armstrong’s assistant). She talks about her school days – mostly how she managed to annoy enough teachers to get kicked out of enough American schools to be consigned to a British boarding school. She talks about her love of reading, her time at Cambridge, her early days of performing, her struggles coming out as a lesbian, the horrible time she and her then-partner and their kids had dealing with the threats and harassment that followed that…. she covers it all. And yes, she also shares some of her celebrity connections.

I loved this book, mostly because I love Sandi Toksvig, but also because I, too, love London. I used to ride buses in that city and felt like life didn’t get much better. The history, the architecture, the charming little shops…. it’s a city I never tire of, and one I wish I could live in. But I also loved that she didn’t follow the typical memoir. It wouldn’t have been a Toksvig experience if she had. I can’t recommend this enough, particularly if you’re already a fan of hers. But even if you’re not, there’s so much in here to connect to – whether you love history, reading, comedy, London, memoirs, or LGBTQ+ stories – it’s all here. And more. I know I’ll return to this again and again.

This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain’s best-loved celebrities – a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star – is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it.

‘Between the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It’s about a bus trip really, because it’s my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living, to where I sometimes work – at the BBC, in the heart of the capital. It’s not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it’s the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it’s my way’.

From London facts including where to find the blue plaque for Una Marson, ‘The first black woman programme maker at the BBC’, to discovering the best Spanish coffee under Southwark’s railway arches; from a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle to memories of climbing Mount Sinai and, at the request of a fellow traveller, reading aloud the Ten Commandments; from the story behind Pissarro’s painting of Dulwich Station to performing in Footlights with Emma Thompson; from painful memoires of being sent to Coventry while at a British boarding school to thinking about how Wombells Travelling Circus of 1864 haunts Peckham Rye;from anecdotes about meeting Prince Charles, Monica Lewinsky and Grayson Perry to Bake-Off antics; from stories of a real and lasting friendship with John McCarthy to the importance of family and the daunting navigation of the Zambezi River in her father’s canoe, this Sandi Toksvig-style memoir is, as one would expect and hope, packed full of surprises.

A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the Number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and to talk to each other because as Sandi says: ‘some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep’. – Goodreads

Book Title: Between the Stops
Author: Sandi Toksvig
Series: No (sadly)
Edition: Audiobook/Paperback
Published By: Virago
Released: October 31, 2019
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Celebrity, Comedy, History, LGBTQ+
Pages: 310
Date Read: February 28-March 4, 2024
Rating: 8.5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.39/5 (5,383 ratings)