Tim Curry’s memoir Vagabond is a wonderfully wry journey, beginning wherever his Royal Navy chaplain father is stationed and documenting a five-decade career from his first job in the original London production of Hair to his turn as King Arthur in Spamalot.

Declaring his personal life off-limits (“I’m not interested in your romances,” he writes, expecting us to reciprocate), he recounts his father’s death when he was 11 and a difficult relationship with his mother – her rage inspires his portrayals of Pennywise in Stephen King’s It and Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers.

Aged 15, he sees Chita Rivera live in West Side Story. It is a seminal moment, and years later, he conquers the role of the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance by letting out his “inner Chita”.

At boarding school, he takes up acting, encouraged by his classics master John Gardner, and makes friends with classmate Jonathan Lynn, who finds fame writing Yes, Minister and goes on to direct Curry as the butler Wadsworth in Clue.

Fans of the film (and the stage version touring Australia) will relish...