Just when I though nothing could be better than the title of Dan Mannix’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Sword-Swallower, I decided to read the opening line, which was, it turns out, even better:
I probably never would have become America’s leading fire-eater if Flamo the Great hadn’t happened to explode that night in front of Krinko’s Great Combined Carnival Sideshows. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951, p.1)
I did not dare read on.
