Bad timing, wasn't it? The week Wossy's book comes out, he and his co-conspirator Russell Brand leave lewd messages all over Andrew Sachs's answer machine - comments about Sachs's granddaughter - which are broadcast on Radio 2. There has been, understandably, something of a national outcry.

Assuming the book isn't pulped to preserve bookshop windows from bricks thrown by the moral majority, I know what you're thinking: the one thing civilisation doesn't need is more output from Jonathan Ross. Surely, the Friday night chat show, the Saturday morning radio show and the film-reviewing gig are enough? His publisher thinks not. So here is a whole book's worth of what Wossy himself describes as “the sort of stuff that I ramble on about in between the records on my radio show”.

Not the transcripts of abusive phone calls. It has, at least, had the advantage of an edit. But in book format, we don't have the benefit of the records to break up the rambling. Rambling segues into rambling that begets - deep breath - more rambling. One minute, we're in the midst of why comic books are great, the next why he had to wear stockings on a milk float, the next why he declined to pleasure a man in a wheelchair. Maybe it's his age. Your organisational skills start to go at 47.

If you can be bothered, you can piece together enough information to see the weal Woss. A child so geeky, he says, even paedophiles weren't interested, he was afforded a freewheeling existence, the son of entrepreneurial, working-class parents he clearly adored, in 1960s and 1970s Leytonstone. His adolescent years throw up rich and well-rehearsed turns on porn, punk, school buses and comic books. And he is at his most sage-like and entertaining on fame, how he got it relatively young, nearly lost it, then learnt how to accept it.

We should be grateful he spared us a book of celebrity name-dropping (the closest he gets is a half-hearted defence of Scientology on behalf of buddy Tom Cruise), but too much of what is left feels like I've-got-to-fill-a-whole-book waffle. He admits as much after an excruciatingly detailed, three-page description of the first time, aged about seven, he (almost) got to see a girl's privates: “I apologise if it seems ungentlemanly to give the episode an airing now, but for Christ's sake, I've got a book to fill.”

Yes, you have, but the lazy bits spoil the observations that do make this book worth persevering with. He holds splendid theories on the stupidity of single-sex education and why men should be neutered. In this age of round-the- clock entertainment, he misses good old 1970s-style boredom. He is not religious but, if he were, he'd be into Shintoism because he could worship what he wanted, which would, of course, be women.

Which gets us on to the thorny subject of sex. As was exemplified this week, the man is obsessed with it - an obsession becoming more of a trademark than his valiant struggle with the letter “r” or his unique dress sense. On television or between records, Sachs scandal aside, it's funny. At book length, it's borderline nauseating. Particularly the chapter entitled Use It or Lose It, the Art of Sexing. Particularly if you've just eaten. Particularly if you were eating sausages. I now know more about Ross's genitals than I do about my own. I know more about his bedroom antics with his 10-years-younger wife than I can recall about my own. There are Hoovers and genital warts, too.

It's too much information squared, which is a shame because now that Parky's shuffled off the televisual coil, Wossy is what's left. He's a talented man living a happy life with a loving family, too many horny dogs, one snake and a laugh like whooping cough. You can almost understand why he's worth 1,000 BBC journalists - if he could only stop going on about rutting for a minute and associating in any way with that equally sex-obsessed Russell Brand, particularly on radio, late at night, with Sachs's telephone number in hand.

Why Do I Say These Things? by Jonathan Ross
Bantam Press £18.99 pp320

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