He despises his primary school, his secondary school even more, and excels mostly at truancy. The Manchester Moz portrays is grim and industrial, and the 60s he describes could quite easily be the 1860s, with large swathes of the opening section recalling Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. It takes a while to get used to, though once in his flow, he’s an able storyteller and you can easily imagine him mouthing the words lugubriously and hilariously deadpan. Instead he favours a stream of consciousness which rarely pauses for breath. Stylistically speaking, Morrissey is surprisingly maverick in the way he constructs his memoir. After spending much of the night in the company of Steven Patrick, here are ten things we learned about Morrissey.

As memoirs go it’s up there, sometimes as scathingly hilarious as Sebastian Horsley’s Dandy Of The Underworld, sometimes as discretely old-fashioned as Dirk Bogarde. Both fans and mere casual observers of the former Smiths singer will find plenty to enjoy in this melancholy page turner, not least of all the vivid and erudite way in which he writes about the music he loves.

Morrissey’s long-awaited autobiography, titled simply, Autobiography, was released at midnight yesterday (October 16).

Autobiography by morrissey