The best showbiz books for Christmas

Seduction, scandal and Scientology

A famous showbiz face on the cover guarantees a place in the shop window, and so publishers love to churn out such books. Yet among the Big Brother hagiographies are usually one or two titles that shed fresh light on the enigma of performance. The year's most unusual showbiz book was David Thomson's Nicole Kidman (Bloomsbury, £18.99). What made it so unusual was that it made no attempt to hide Thomson's infatuation. More like romantic poetry than film criticism, love letter than biography, this billet doux should have been a one-way ticket to Pseud's Corner, but his adoration gives this eccentric paean an intimacy it would otherwise have lacked. Bewildering, exasperating, sporadically inspired, it has as many bum notes as bon mots, but it's never dull.

If you're similarly besotted with Kidman, you probably still harbour a jealous interest in her ex-husband, analysed by Iain Johnstone in Tom Cruise: All The World's A Stage (Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99). After Thomson's declaration of undying love, it's a relief to find that Johnstone isn't smitten. He admires Cruise, but his tone is respectful not reverential. Like Thomson, Johnstone knows his movies, and his matter-of-fact appraisal is a welcome antidote to Thomson's more florid flights of fancy. Johnstone's businesslike biog feels as if written at arm's length - but this distance allows him to state some awkward facts about Cruise's Scientology. It's hard to believe he could have been quite so frank in an authorised biography.

You can't get much more authorised than And It's Goodnight From Him... The Autobiography of The Two Ronnies by Ronnie Corbett (Michael Joseph, £20). Barker died before the book was written, but Corbett's memories of his shy co-star are remarkably vivid, and these tender recollections more than make up for his own, often banal, reminiscences. Corbett is a likeable narrator and a transparently decent chap, but when talking about himself he can be Pooterish.

The same could be said of Michael Palin's Diaries: The Python Years (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20). Like Corbett (who worked with him on The Frost Report), Palin is very perceptive about other people - less so about himself. If you can plough through the domestic minutiae, and rather plodding ruminations, there's a wealth of fascinating stuff about Monty Python, but the most revealing passage was written by someone else. "Michael Palin is not just one of Britain's foremost comedy character actors," writes John Cleese, in a profile to promote The Life of Brian, "He also talks a lot... Michael chats, quips, fantasises, reminisces, commiserates, encourages, plans, discusses and elaborates. Then... when everyone else has gone to bed, he goes home and writes up a diary."

Boyd Hilton is almost as exhaustive in Inside Little Britain (Ebury, £18.99), which chronicles every spit and cough of Matt Lucas and David Walliams' mammoth national tour. This fly-on-the-dressing-room-wall account reads more like a script than a conventional biography, but it does give you a pretty good idea of what Britain's most outrageous double act are really like. Offstage, Lucas and Walliams seem like a couple of sentimental maiden aunts, as if their grotesque caricatures have used up all their bile.

Fans of more old-fashioned biography (and comedy) will probably prefer Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (HarperCollins, £18.99), a book with unrivalled access to (and knowledge of) its elusive subject. John Fisher produced some of Cooper's TV shows, he's a member of the Magic Circle, and his expertise and insight compensate for somewhat pedestrian prose. However, the show-business book of the year is Rupert Everett's Red Carpets & Other Banana Skins (Little, Brown, £18.99). This could have been awful - a Hollywood memoir by an actor in mid-career, mindful of his famous colleagues' reputations. In fact, it's like Everett's best acting - elegant, seductive and full of fun. It's a wonderful surprise to find that he's a brilliant autobiographer - witty and evocative, with a cinematic eye for mood and detail. And, unlike Ronnie Corbett, he has a sensational tale to tell.