Standup Jon Richardson on turning his dark teenage diaries into a tearjerking memoir: ‘I couldn’t sugarcoat those years’

While facing grief, illness and a very public breakup, the comic reached for his diaries – and found a happy kid who spiralled into despair. Inspired by a Nobel laureate, he wrote a frank, funny book about that boy and what he grew into It begins on Christmas Day, 1996: “It’s…