Kathy Burke’s mother, Bridget, died of stomach cancer when she was 18 months old; she writes that it made her “feel dead famous” in her community. She was raised by her older brothers, John and Barry, who were 10 and eight when it happened, and sometimes by their father Pat, an alcoholic for many years, violent with it, who struggled to care for his family. Pat and Bridget had moved to London from Ireland, and the Burkes lived on an estate in Islington, where the other families played a vital role in raising and feeding the children. On his deathbed, in 1994, Pat asked Kathy to do two things: to give up smoking, and to write more. It has only taken her 30 years, she says, but she’s finally done the latter.

The entertainment industry is top-heavy with people from middle-and upper-class backgrounds who have a limited understanding of lives that don’t resemble their own. In my experience, one of the misconceptions they have about working-class life is that it is all grey skies and kitchen‑sink misery. Burke’s memoir has its painful moments, but the joy radiating from it is palpable and invigorating.

As a small child, she remembers hanging around the ice-cream van (“the usual queue of kids forming a multicoloured snake”, she writes, deliciously) near her block of flats. A stranger appears, announces she’s won on the bingo, and offers to buy them ice-creams. “Ooh, ain’t you ugly,” she says to Burke, with breathtaking cruelty. Crushed, she turns her mortification into humour. “I’m the best dancer at the ugly bug ball, though,” she quips, and does a jig to make everyone laugh.

Her teenage years in the 70s and 80s involve pinballing around London, giddy on punk and possibility

The anecdote is telling, and soothing hurt with humour becomes a theme. Burke is sometimes evasive about deeper wounds, alluding to a bad love affair but keeping it out of focus. Stories of kindness come more easily, and as a child, she encounters a lot of it. Her teenage years in the 70s and 80s involve pinballing around London, giddy on punk and possibility. She bumps into Johnny Rotten, panics about what to say to him and then, perfectly, simply shouts at him to “fuck off”. She runs into the Clash, and almost becomes a roadie for them before deciding to take up a place at the legendary Anna Scher theatre school instead. That decision leads to a long career as an actor, writer and director.

Burke is probably best known for her funny roles. Her early days of live comedy sound anarchic and gleeful. On stage with the musical duo Raw Sex at Chelsea barracks, their raucous performance earns heckles and jeers. She responds by shouting “Give Ireland back to the Irish!” before they all beat a hasty retreat. During the 1990s, she appears in Absolutely Fabulous and then becomes extremely famous co-starring in Harry Enfield’s sketch shows. Their teenage boy characters, Kevin and Perry (she was Perry, naming him after a friend), even get their own film.

But she offers plenty of reminders that she has also been a serious actor, albeit rarely taken as seriously as she deserved. In 1997, she won the best actress award at Cannes for an extraordinary performance in her old mate Gary Oldman’s film Nil By Mouth. Elsewhere, however, a producer expresses his amazement that she is capable of doing an accent other than her own. There is short shrift for Danny Boyle, with whom she worked on a TV miniseries called Mr Wroe’s Virgins; she likens him to “a supercilious priest from my childhood”. (He fares better than her co-star Kerry Fox, whom she calls “a charmless prick”.) In the film Elizabeth, she is a sickly and memorable Mary Tudor. Its director, Shekhar Kapur, suggests that Burke might need extra help, as she is not the type who would usually play a queen. “I didn’t know when we met that you were working class,” he tells her. Burke remembers all of this with a shrug of frustration, but pay attention and you can discern fury bubbling up from the page.

Autobiographies are rarely as blunt as they could be, for a variety of reasons. If this represents the toned-down version of Burke’s life, then I can only imagine what it would be like to hear her tell it at full throttle. A Mind of My Own ends abruptly, when she decides she wants to stop acting to focus on directing theatre, announcing her retirement on SMTV Live, the Saturday morning kids’ show hosted by Ant and Dec. I hope she writes about what came next, because whether she’s in the spotlight or not, her stories are vivid, bright and beautiful.

skip past newsletter promotion

Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

A Mind of My Own by Kathy Burke is published by Simon & Schuster (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.