My Pink Gas Mask Paperback – May 9, 2012

Had Adrian Street decided to go with a mainstream publisher, we probably would have ended up with a 250 page autobiography skimming all aspects of his life, with the majority of it devoted to his pro wrestling career. However, he decided to go the self-publishing route, and the result is really something unique. Clearly, and self-admittedly, Street wanted to tell his story on his own terms, and what you get here is not just a brief reminiscence of his ring career but the first step in a testament to his entire life. Although 279 pages, 'My Pink Gas Mask' is narrowly spaced and would probably run well over 300 if published by a well-known print house specializing in this type of book.This initial volume covers his earliest days growing up in Brynmawr, Wales. Street has an impressive memory and we are given a fascinating glimpse into his childhood in the ration-restricted landscape of wartime Britain. Known best for his groundbreaking ring persona which took a Gorgeous George-style effeminate gimmick and ramped it up ten notches, Street was, from the start, a pugnacious and determined fighter who grew up in a working class rural village culture which admired strong men who could fight a good fight.Early in the book, the narrative bounces back and forth between his own experiences and those of his father who, having donned the khaki in Street's infancy, was serving serving in the Pacific theatre. This dual narrative builds until their eventual, and sadly anti-climactic, reunification. The story continues into the post war years and his mid-teens.Street is a natural storyteller and his commentary on matters related to religion, schooling, family life, various 'pet' hobbies, and copious schoolyard scraps are frequently hilarious and occasionally a bit disturbing. However, for those readers primarily looking to learn about his mat career, you will not find much concerning the subject in this first volume. Wrestling does not really enter much into the picture until well into the book's second half. With that said, however, this reviewer humbly encourages readers who typically gorge on heavy doses of WWE-published material to expand their horizons a bit. If that's not going to happen (your loss), you might want to start with Volume Two. Conversely, this book would be of great interest to readers who could care less about professional wrestling, including those seeking compelling coming-of-age stories (perhaps those who previously sunk their teeth into 'Angela's Ashes' or similar works), wartime history, and further reading in the so-called British "hardman" genre.As a self-published work, this book does have some flaws. By Street's own admission, it is wholly self-written and self-edited. Accordingly, grammar errors, most especially in the form of sentence fragments, run throughout. Some might find it a bit distracting. On the other hand, if you chose to suspend disbelief and view it all as some form of literary device, you can certainly run with it. Neverthless, for this reason alone, the book cannot be given full marks.Volume Two, also purchased through Amazon, now awaits me, and I am pretty confident that I'll be picking up Three and Four as well. Good job Adrian Street!

As a professional wrestling fan for over 30 years, when I saw that "Exotic" Adrian Street had a series of books out, I quickly purchased all four. Street is a great storyteller, and you almost feel like you're right there with him when he is discussing the early years of his life. Once I started this book, I could not put it down. I wish more wrestling books, or books in general, were as detailed as this one is. Please note that this book is about Mr. Street's early life, and doesn't have a huge amount of information about his wrestling career. (This comes in the next three books.) However, if you want to learn about Adrian Street, the man, in addition to his career as a wrestler, pick this and his other three books up right away!

Great bio ! Best ever

Exceeded all expectations and then some, I had been looking for this book for a long time and now I have it.

Adrian Street wasn't one of my favorite wrestlers as a kid but he maybe after reading his first in a series of books about his life. While the first book covers his life in Wales prior to wrestling, it contains critical information to understand his later career. I already purchased the second book.

This isn't a wrestlign book. Lets make that clear now. This is the autobiography of Adrian Street part 1. Something so many wrestlers autobiography books lack is any detail about their lives. While that might not be a 'seller', a person's life isn't just about their work.This is a great book on pre and post war Wales, and a little boy growing up. A little boy with a very vivid imagination, and a thurst for adventure.I will agree that the tales of Adrian's father are rather long, but I feel they deserve a place, not just in this book but in history.It's difficult to say who I would reccomend this book to, as I would say there is something here for everybody.

Read this book as a project. Adrian Street's father disliked him and it is easy to understand why. Some parts of the book were interesting but to me he comes across as a sadistic bully and I got fed up of reading about the vicious blow by blow fights he revelled in. (Not wrestling matches)A detailed description of him killing a ram who had displeased him was quite horrible.

Although I admit to being a little biased, as I am a huge lifelong fan of this particular wrestler, I enjoyed this book so much, and it provided me with multiple laugh out loud moments, as Adrian writes in a direct and down to earth manner and comes across as warm and likeable. I do not think that you would necessarily have to be a wrestling fan to appreciate his autobiography however, as it is an excellent read altogether, just perfect for long winter evenings. Highly looking forward to the other parts of Adrian's story!

Looking for a new wrestling autobiography to read I stumbled across Adrian Street's set of four books and thought I would give the first one a go. Ive been a wrestling fan since I was 7 years old, in 1984. British wrestling didn't really grab my attention, I was aware of it on World Of Sport on Saturday afternoons and thought it was interesting but that was as far as my interest went. That was until the advent of cable TV in the UK and a visit to my grandad's house to find him riveted to the TV. He was watching World Wide Wrestling presented by the NWA and it blew my mind. I had never seen anything like it, the characters, the drama and the razamataz was incedible. One of those colourful characters was Exotic Adrian Street, skipping around the ring in glittered make up with blonde pig tails he looked like anything but a wrestler, until he wrestled that is and he was all man.I thought I would check this book out to read how his career began and his start around the UK. As you can imagine, with this being the first installment of his autobiography it has little mention of wrestling until the end, instead it focuses on his childhood in Wales up to the age of 16, focuing heavily on his relationship with his family. The positive about this book is the detail he goes into with regards to how his life was developing and the characters who shaped him. The negative I would say about the book is that there is quite a bit of information that is irrelevant to the arc of the story, this is probably due to the fact that the book is self written and published with no edit to refine the story and keep it moving along at a steady pace. That said I still found it very entertaining even though every now and then it stalls a little, particularly the information about his father's war time activities, it does turn into a bit of a history lesson, but this can be excused as it is obvious that Adrian has a love of military history.After book one I am looking forward to getting into book two, which begins with his move to London to seek out his career as a pro wrestler.Overall a good book, bit slow in places, you will have to stick it out through some points, but it is worth it in the end.

Being a grammar Nazi of the worst kind, the numerous errors of English that pepper this book ought to ruin it for me, but somehow the homespun-English doesn't really seem to matter. Covering his childhood in Wales as it does, it probably doesn't count as a wrestling autobiography as such, but it's such a great story and so engagingly told that it would be a mistake to avoid it just for that reason. It also gives an excellent insight into how his upbringing shaped the man, and performer, that Adrian Street was to become.