BOOK OF THE WEEK
HITLERS AND A MARILYN
by Adam Andrusier (Headline £16.99, 320 pp)
Did you ever practise your signature when you were a child? Just in case — on the off-chance — that you became famous?
Of course you did. Everyone does.
Adam Andrusier probably didn’t, because he was too busy acquiring other people’s signatures. Collecting autographs is one of those hobbies that, if not kept in check, can become an obsession. You’ll do pretty much anything for a Kirk Douglas.
Andrusier started small but the bug got him, and now, in his mid-40s, he is a dealer in rare, valuable autographs. He probably has more Kirk Douglases than you could shake a stick at.
Adam Andrusier, who has been collecting autographs since age ten, has penned a book about his life. Pictured: Liz Taylor
And this is his story. Andrusier grew up in the North London suburb of Pinner in a secular Jewish family of rare comic potential. His father Adrian collected postcards of old European synagogues and went every Thursday to an Israeli folk dance club.
He appears to have been the extrovert’s…
