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‘Sorry to disappoint’: The surprising truth about Amy Schumer

Comedian Amy Schumer has a secret.

Comedian Amy Schumer has a secret. Photo: Getty

Amy Schumer is a train wreck, out all night partying hard, picking up any old guy to go home with and get off; trash with a big mouth and a heart that can’t commit.

Or at least, that’s what hordes of the razor sharp, potty mouthed and proudly feminist comedian’s online trolls think, and perhaps a fair few fans of her stand-up routines and Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer too.

But here’s the thing, the real Schumer isn’t anything like the “monogamy isn’t realistic” preaching lead character of her debut movie Trainwreck, directed by Judd Apatow. Far from it.

As she reveals in her first book, Harper Collins’ The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo (which she stresses is neither memoir, at only 35, nor a self-help guide), “I’m a flawed f**k-up and I haven’t figured anything out”.

For example, Schumer has only ever had one one-night stand: “I’m so sorry to disappoint anyone who thinks I walk around at all times with a margarita in one hand and a dildo in the other.”

Not that she’s all angel, as segues into her teenage shoplifting and weed-selling years attest. Schumer’s not afraid to confront her own dumb missteps including the tribal tattoo of the book’s title.

“I wear my mistakes like badges of honour, and I celebrate them. They make me human,” she says.

Those glorious recollections are contrasted sharply with a series of jerks that subjected Schumer to psychological and occasionally physical abuse.

Schumer reading her book to her father. Photo: Instagram

Schumer reading her book to her father. Photo: Instagram

Most distressing is a frank recounting of the loss of her virginity to an emotionally unstable boyfriend who didn’t feel the need to wake her first.

A brutally honest and hilarious account of her riches to rags and back to riches journey towards being one of the world’s most recognisable comedians, The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo paints a detailed picture of the real Amy, one who revels in playing up her alter ego’s bad behaviour.

Schumer with her boyfriend, furniture designer Ben Hanisch. Photo: Instagram

Schumer with her boyfriend, furniture designer Ben Hanisch. Photo: Instagram

At one point she reveals the best part about “having money” (she has an estimated net worth of US$1 million) as being the ability to “be an a**hole and burn money on stupid s**t”.

“If one of my friends is working at a comedy club, I will sometimes pay to have their greenroom filled to the brim with ridiculous bouquets of flowers, like a hip-hop artist’s funeral,” she writes.

The book is at its funniest when Schumer adds contemporary searingly sarcastic footnotes to her teenage and early 20s diary entries.

Girl with the Lower Back TattooRevealing her true introvert nature, more likely to seek out quiet solace and meditation than boozy benders these days, there are candid family recollections too, including a graphically dehumanising moment during her alcoholic father’s struggle with multiple sclerosis.

Of confessing her sexual urges to her mother at 16 over a bowl of chowder, Schumer says, “Looking back I realise that going to your mother for a pep talk about losing your virginity in high school is odd, but I was raised with no boundaries”.

It’s lucky for us that she didn’t.

Despite claiming that this isn’t self-help, there is fantastic stuff here about embracing, rather than being shamed by, your body and about setting focused goals.

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