Cher's wild world

The singer's memoir is full of jaw-dropping tales

-  MICHAEL ODELL

But with so much to recount, deeper reflections get left by the wayside

Cher: The Memoir Part One Cher s it possible for a life to be too eventful? The danger is, if it really is like a rollercoaster, when you sit down to describe it, all you remember is a blur of action and an awful lot of screaming. And this 400-plus page tome is only part one of Cher's memoir. It's clear from the outset that destiny has much in store for the Goddess of Pop. The reader really has to hold on tight if they want to make out what's happening in this relentlessly fast-moving white-knuckler.

Just a few pages in and I was wondering: there's a "wrong 'un" in most families - but bad apples on every branch of the family tree? When, we are soon wondering, is Cher going to emerge from this mess in her big boots and feather boa, crooning in that unforgettable contralto? Well, first her mother Georgia has to marry Cher's dad Johnnie, a heroin addict who loses his truck business in a card game before abandoning his family.

Georgia comes within a hair's breadth of aborting Cher who, born in El Centro California in 1946, ends up in a children's home run by cruel nuns for which her mother pays with for tips earned singing in an all-night diner. For one moment it looks like Georgia might make it: she is invited to audition for a film in Hollywood but loses out to another young hopeful: Marilyn Monroe.