LADY PARTS UNCOVERED

IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY checked out Andrea Martin’s Lady Parts, get to it. I’m not being rude – it’s the name of the legendary comedienne’s new memoir, which chronicles everything from her childhood to her career to her longtime battle with bulimia to, well, her actual lady parts. “That was crazily candid!” Martin, 67, howls when ask about the section that covers “the challenges of a mature woman’s body,” including frank talk ranging from arthritis to Spanx to skin tags. “But I guess out of that comes real truth. I think everybody’s experienced those things, but who wants to talk about them?”

Martin does, with a degree of wit and integrity rarely seen in celebrity tomes. And despite her showbiz success, from SCTV to Tony Award-winning turns on Broadway, it’s the non-celebrity tales, like falling in love with a man 29 years younger or her relationship with her parents that prove the most insightful – even to her.

“The story about why I fly to Atlanta to get my hair cut … I started writing it,” she notes, “and in the middle of it I realized where it all came from … And I understood my dad a little bit better and our relationship. It was cathartic.”

If, in 10 years, she wrote a sequel, Martin says she hopes the next chapters would reveal “that my concern for the past and my concern for the future no longer matter.”

Ironically, as she perfects living in the here and now, it’s the tales from Martin’s past that prove so entertaining today.

“I couldn’t have written this book 40 years ago because it’s not the same insight,” Martin admits. “It’s not like I’ve experienced so much. It’s just that I have … taken in the small moments of my life, and that’s really what shaped me.”

Andrea Martin’s Lady Parts is available now.