Greg Fleet's hilarious, heartbreaking account of the life-or-death battle for his soul
For 30 years Greg Fleet has been one of Australia's most widely known and best loved comedians. For the same period, he's had a drug habit that has delivered him comedy and tragedy in equal parts.
On the high road: a genius wit and prodigious work ethic take him from NIDA and Neighbours, to Shakespeare and award-winning theatre, and on to acclaim and adoration on stand-up stages all over the world.
On the low road: a yearning for true love mutates into a downward spiral of addiction - a maelstrom of faked and near deaths, shared houses and needles, twisted trysts with cocaine and ice on the road to rock bottom... and, just maybe, redemption.
From first gentle kiss to hate-fuelled wrecking ball, Greg Fleet has written the most mesmeric of memoirs - part guilty pleasure, part sweet poison.
These things happen ...
PRAISE FOR THESE THINGS HAPPEN
"for all its deadpan style this is a cautionary tale ... about drug addiction, being rocked by life and salvaging the things you love." The Saturday Age
"These Things Happen strikes a rare balance, tackling a difficult subject with redemptive humour but never hiding from the gravity of it." Irvine Welsh
Greg Fleet is an actor, comedian, broadcaster and author. Born in Michigan, USA, his family moved to Victoria when he was aged four. He studied at Geelong Grammar School for twelve years and then attended NIDA for a year before being expelled.
His acting career began opposite Nicole Kidman in 1984 and he went on to star in Prisoner (as 'Delivery Man No 2'), Underbelly: Squizzy (as Richard Buckley - Australia's most violent prisoner), and Neighbours (his character killed the much-loved character Daphne), as well as treading the boards as Feste in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night for the Melbourne Theatre Company and developing a stand-up career that saw him acclaimed all over the world.
Both here and in the UK, his comedy across TV, film, radio and theatre, and the honesty with which he speaks about his long-term drug addiction, has made him one of the most respected, beloved and in-debt stand-up comics around.
Greg Fleet's hilarious and harrowing memoir, These Things Happen, will be published in 2015 by Pan Macmillan.
He can be found tweeting at @thegregfleet.
