I remember interviewing Jenny Eclair a few years ago. Over a nice cup of tea in her stylish modern house designed by her husband Geof she showed me her diary where she made notes after her shows. Except that the text on the page it opened at was unreadable. The gig had gone so badly, she explained, that her tears had smudged the ink. 

This was a striking indication of how important doing well at her chosen profession was to her. As well as revealing how sensitive she was. It’s not just about the money, although making a significant pile of dosh is one of the themes that runs through this autobiography. It’s also about being successful at what you do. After 40 years in the business I think it’s fair to say Jenny Eclair is successful, tears or no tears.

Her book charts her path which, by her own admission, has sometimes been one step forward, one step sideways. While it is never a “poor me” story it is often a “why not me?” story, asking why other comedians got the breaks and not her?

The answer often seems to be that they were men, but there have also been occasions where she has been pipped to the post by women. Or lost a gig such as being a regular on Loose Women, by scrawling pubic hair on a celebrity's picture in the ITV corridor. Eclair is brutally honest about her bitterness and envy when she touches on the subject of women in comedy. She wants to be supportive but also hates it when someone surges past her on the career race track. One year in Edinburgh she thought a fellow female might win an award. She is honest enough to admit it was a relief when they didn’t.

Jokes, Jokes, Jokes takes some time to get going – a bit like Eclair’s comedy career – but it is useful to get the back story. Dad Derek was a military man, but unconventional. After the war he didn’t quite fit into civvy street and did something military again, this time a bit covert, which meant the family moving around. There were years in Berlin in particular before settling in Blackpool. Mum June was an equally strong figure, wearing a caliper due to polio but just getting on with life and bringing up three children.

For me the book gets more interesting when get to Eclair’s career. Jenny Hargreaves' cake-based stage name came about after an off-hand pub chat and joining a group called Cathy Le Creme and The Rumbabas. Everyone who is interested in comedy knows how alternative comedy started at London’s Comedy Store, but it is always worth noting people who were doing similar things elsewhere around the same time. Eclair studied drama in Manchester and cut her teeth there performing poetry, as well as popping up in small TV roles.

Inevitably though she came to London, settling in Camberwell* and slowly but surely things started to happen. The emphasis, however, is on the slowly. Sometimes it looks like the big break is about to happen but it always seems slightly out of reach. Auditions are fluffed, her face doesn’t fit, she gets filmed for TV and then gets edited out. Major fame eludes her. When someone recognises her in the street they think they know her from a shop in Streatham.

Alongside this story Eclair tells a more personal strand about her struggles with body issues and her relationship with food. If you read the book on Kindle do a search for the phrase “puppy fat”, which seems to pepper the first half. Her anorexia dominated her life for a while and Eclair is lucky she came through it. It must have been terrifying for her when she saw warning signs in her daughter Phoebe when she was unhappy at Uni – pictures in the book make them resemble clones. But her daughter turned out more than fine and it now a roaring success as a playwright.

Eclair’s biggest claim to fame early on is that she was the first woman to win Perrier’s Edinburgh Comedy Award with a solo show, in 1995. Prozac And Tantrums found Eclair in the right place at the right time for once, a foul mouthed boozy bouffant-haired blonde surfing of the wave of ladette culture. She understandably went on a bender the night she won which, bizarrely, culminated in her doing a drunken duet with Leo Sayer.

She looks back on that period with mixed feelings now. She wouldn’t do some of the material she did then and maybe the whole ladette culture movement set feminism back more than it helped women. Eclair says that there have been huge strides made for women wanting to get into comedy, but the fact that there has to be a whatsapp group warning them about men on the circuit who they should avoid suggests there is still some way to go to make it an entirely safe environment.

After Edinburgh Eclair continued to work hard without becoming a household name. She did well in I’m A Celebrity...which got her onto the reality TV rollercoaster, but it was the Grumpy Old Women franchise that hit paydirt, with sell out tours and books. Eclair’s work finally seemed to hit a nerve with a larger section of the public. Maybe at last she wouldn’t be mistaken in the street for someone who works in a shop in Streatham. Taskmaster was a nice addition to her CV, although as she ruefully notes, it took a hell of a long time for her to be invited on even though the show is made by the same company that manages her.

Jokes, Jokes, Jokes is, as the direct title and subtitle My Very Funny Memoir suggests, a very humorous book. But also an unusually unfiltered one, with Eclair constantly candid about her own faults. She is repeatedly frank about wanting success and money. There was nothing wrong, she points out, with banking a cheque for being the face of Vagisan Moisturing Cream (although she also points out that she doesn’t have a particularly dry vagina herself).

At times the business she is in can be both cruel and unpredictable, a world of feast or famine. First class travel or getting the 176 bus. As a freelancer she had to hustle. Comedy books, novels and now this autobiography proved to be another way she could get her thoughts, feelings and savage wit out there. 

Towards the end the book gets more personal. She sometimes can’t believe her partner – and later husband (more tax efficient) – Geof has stood by her ever since she pursued him around SE5 in the 1980s. It was his steady job at the TV Times that enabled her to stick to her guns and make her way up comedy’s greasy pole. She is full of gratitude for Geof and bursting with pride for her daughter, while confessing that she was often absent and not a great mother when Phoebe was growing up.

And then there are her parents, who both made it into their nineties. As Phoebe became independent Eclair found herself making frequent trips up to Blackpool. The account of June’s final years is funny, touching and immensely relatable to anyone who has seen a parent succumb to old age and everything that goes with it.

The thing that comes across about Eclair is that she is very much a skilled survivor. Comedy is tough in all sorts of ways – hence those tears on her notepad – and to carve out a career that lasts a lifetime is an achievement. There are plenty that have fallen by the wayside. I was going to suggest that maybe her success is partly down to her refusal to give up but that sounds way too much like she grinds her audience into submission. She is too talented to need to do that.

Jokes, Jokes, Jokes is a terrific read which really gives you a real insight into what it is like being a professional female comedian. It is not easy. Beware of reading this on the 176, this is a book that will make you howl with laughter. It might also make you cry.

Buy Jokes, Jokes, Jokes: My Very Funny Memoir here.

*Possibly a coincidence, but the colour scheme of her dust jacket is the colours of local football team Dulwich Hamlet.