Quick Take
- Narration: Bob Saget narrating his own memoir is the only version that makes sense, his digressions and sudden pivots to genuine grief work because you’re hearing them in the voice that actually lived them.
- Themes: Duality of clean and dirty comedy, loss and resilience, the business of being funny
- Mood: Chaotic and warm, lurching from profane to heartfelt without apology
- Verdict: Essential for anyone who always suspected Danny Tanner was a front, and a surprisingly moving listen for those who didn’t.
I came to this one having watched Full House exactly zero times as a child but knowing Bob Saget primarily from The Aristocrats documentary, where his contribution is genuinely one of the most disturbing things ever committed to film. That context prepared me well for Dirty Daddy, which is dedicated to the proposition that Saget’s sweetness and his filth were never actually in opposition. They were the same thing wearing different hats depending on who was in the room.
Listening to this memoir now carries weight that the original 2014 recording couldn’t have anticipated. Saget died in January 2022 at 65, and returning to this audiobook feels like finding letters from someone you didn’t know well enough when they were alive. The reviews here mention it obliquely, and one reviewer clearly returned after his death, noting how the book makes you feel the loss of a genuinely nice, authentic man. That quality, authenticity, specifically the kind that doesn’t perform for the room, is what makes Dirty Daddy more than a celebrity memoir padded with name drops.
The Comedian’s Comedian Problem and How Saget Solves It
Saget spent decades navigating a public identity that was essentially an accident of casting. Full House made him America’s TV dad. His stand-up was transgressive, explicit, and frequently very dark. The gap between those two personas should have produced anxiety or resentment, and Dirty Daddy is partly about how it did and how Saget ultimately made peace with both versions of himself. His accounts of working with Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Pryor, and Don Rickles are the most instructive sections of the book. These legends didn’t have clean-TV versions of themselves. Saget’s ability to learn from them while living inside the Full House franchise gives the memoir a distinctive tension that holds across its nearly seven hours.
The Stream of Consciousness That Is Also the Point
One reviewer notes that Saget jumps around constantly but that once you get used to the style, you realize it’s part of the fun. This is accurate but worth unpacking. The structure of this audiobook is genuinely non-linear, and not in a calculated literary way. Saget thinks the way he talks, and he talks the way he performs, which means digressions are not interruptions, they are the texture. A story about America’s Funniest Home Videos will slide into a memory of his sister’s death and then back out into an anecdote about John Stamos without a tonal gear-change. If you need your memoirs to have clean chapters and logical progressions, this will frustrate you. If you’re willing to follow the associative logic, there are passages here that are remarkable in their compression of grief and humor.
Behind the Scenes of Full House: What Actually Held My Attention
Saget promises behind-the-scenes stories from Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos, and he delivers on this selectively. The anecdotes about Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are fond and handled with care. The accounts of how he and the cast actually talked to each other off-camera are consistently funnier than the show ever was, which he would be the first to admit. But these aren’t tell-all revelations, they’re the memories of someone who was genuinely fond of the people he worked with and who found the cognitive dissonance of his dual career more amusing than agonizing. That generosity of spirit is either this book’s greatest quality or its limiting factor, depending on what you came for.
Who Should Listen / Who Should Skip
If you want a clean, orderly celebrity memoir with a thesis and a narrative arc, this isn’t it. If you want to spend nearly seven hours in the company of someone funny, smart, grief-marked, and entirely himself, it’s one of the better audiobook memoirs from a comedian that I’ve encountered. The self-narration is non-negotiable in both directions: it’s exactly what makes this work, and it’s also occasionally exhausting. Listen at 1.0x speed. The digressions are the point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this audiobook worth revisiting given that Bob Saget passed away in 2022?
Several listeners who have returned to it since his death describe it as both difficult and rewarding, you hear someone fully alive on the recording, which makes the listening experience richer and sadder simultaneously. It’s not a morbid listen, but the context is present throughout.
How explicit is Dirty Daddy? The title suggests adult content.
It’s explicit in language and in some subject matter, particularly discussions of stand-up comedy traditions and personal experiences. This isn’t a family audiobook. If you’re familiar with Saget’s stand-up rather than his TV persona, you know roughly what to expect.
Does the book cover the Full House years in meaningful depth, or is it mostly stand-up and comedy history?
There’s a substantial section on Full House and AFHV, including behind-the-scenes stories with John Stamos, the Olsen twins, and the extended cast. But these chapters are woven into a broader memoir about his life in comedy. It’s not primarily a Full House book.
Saget mentions personal losses including family members. How much of this memoir deals with grief compared to comedy?
The grief sections are present and honest but not dominant. His three sisters, the loss of one of them, and later the illness and death of his wife Nancy are touched on with genuine feeling. But the emotional register shifts quickly, which is either the book’s strength or its difficulty depending on your preferences.
