I’ve just finished reading Yvonne Innes’ Dip My Brain in Joy – her biography of her husband Neil Innes. It is a beautiful and moving tribute to a music and comedy genius who we lost far too young.

I saw Neil perform several times – twice as part of GRIMMS, once solo at the Edinburgh Festival, and twice in the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s reunion concerts. I have always regretted being too young to see the original incarnation of the Bonzos in their regular performances in South Shields, but have loved their music since my teens and The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse was one of the first LPs I bought.

I’ve also read Ki Longfellow’s lavishly illustrated biography of Viv Stanshall. While both books pay tribute to the genius performers behind the Bonzos, and so many more projects, I love Yvonne Innes’ book more. While I would have been a total fanboy meeting Stanshall, Neil Innes is a person I would have treasured as a friend. Stanshall was always larger than life, but Innes was a person who radiated life as it should be lived. Both partners detail the challenges in living with someone who was driven to create and perform, but Yvonne Innes also gives us an insight into the radiant joy of being married to Neil, from meeting as students in London, to going through life’s challenges and triumphs together with the love of your life.

Neither man got the fortune they deserved. In Stanshall’s case there was a degree of self sabotage, but Neil was ripped off by the music industry and misfortune. Having your songs reattributed by a greedy corporation was finacially damaging, but then having a friend and collaborator (Eric Idle) also prevent Neil getting the full rewards from writing the Rutles music and the songs in Spamalot must have been even worse. However Yvonne says Neil got over both dissapointments and continue to live a life that as the tilte suggests was dipped in joy.

Having lost my amazing wife Jules last year, the sense of loss of a loved partner in the book was hard to read. That sense that they are just around the corner and will walk back in soon is enormously hard and although the love and tributes from friends and the people whose lives they have touched with magic is heartening, it hardly touches the sides of the personal loss.

Dip My Brain in Joy is a brave book and anyone who loves Neil’s music will be left wishing he was still here and missing his wonderful talent and the joy he shared.