They say that when you have reached a certain age you should look at the obituary page in The Times every day to check if you're still alive ... but Freddie recently made a surprise appearance on the Letters page.
It was prompted by a letter in The Times last Wednesday which suggested that British comics were shortlived compared to Americans - a remark which, as cowriter of Freddie's book, I could not allow to go unchallenged.
The more gimlet-eyed among may have noticed, however, that this was a promotional opportunity missed. I thought a more compact letter would have a better chance of publication, but now I wish I'd risked an extra line or two to trumpet the information that Freddie has a book out.
It is, of course, the ideal Christmas present for Times readers of a certain age, should any be reading, although quite a few people have told me that the book also has an appeal simply as a record of the comedy scene of another era. Chortle described the substantial section of the book before Freddie's Opp Knocks fame as "an evocative, down-to-earth account of life for a jobbing comic at the time," going on to praise the book's "vivid description of the scene of 50 years ago."
So you don't need to be familiar with Freddie's work to get something from his story ... but the difficulty remains, what with my stupid Times-writing diffidence, of how to get Funny Bones under the noses of people likely to warm to it, especially in the run up to Christmas. It has been entered for the Sheridan Morley Prize and the Theatre Book Prize but both are some months away.
Anyway, if you are reading this blog I'm trusting that your interest may already have been piqued so go here to learn more and buy the book - and there is no limit on the number of copies an individual may purchase, I wish to make that very clear. Oh yeth.
Buy Freddie Davies's autobiography Funny Bones from amazon (paperback) or direct from Scratching Shed Publishing (paperback or limited edition hardback)