Irish celebrity autobiographies are a curious beast. The past few years have seen any number of home-grown 'personalities' put their life story to paper, most recently 'gardening rebel' Diarmuid Gavin with How The Boy Next Door Turned Out and The Thing Is… from DJ Dave Fanning.

It gets even better: next month promises the publication of Lorraine Keane's as-yet untitled memoir. We couldn't be more excited. The global market for celebrity tell-alls has never been busier: lest we forget, we're living in a world where 32-year-old former page 3 girl Jordan has published three bestselling volumes of autobiography.

But the Irish don't really do tell-alls. The country's too small for starters, and when it comes to the crunch, we deeply care what other people think. We don't want to cause offence.

And thanks to our libel laws, chances are that if you say one unsavoury word about any living being, you'll be taken to the cleaners – and hammered by the media. What's left is a procession of anaemic, toothless tell-nothings, collections of harmless anecdotes punctuated by a few baby pictures – and enough thundering duds to keep the bargain bookstores busy through Christmas 2012.

It's understandable that our own unique brand of 'personality' might want to cash in on the vogue for memoirs, especially if publishing houses are willing to cough up hefty advances and, in some cases, throw in a ghost writer to seal the deal. Chat to your 'co-author' for a couple of hours, he goes away, types it up, and makes you sound deep and serious and bam. You're a best-selling author.

At least that's how it's meant to work. Irish celebrity autobiographies tend to be curiously chaste and unrevealing affairs. The late great Gerry Ryan had a hell of an autobiography in him: unfortunately, that's exactly where it stayed, as 2008's disappointing Would the Real Gerry Ryan Please Stand Up offered little by way of insight into a complex and curiously vulnerable human being. Ryan's reticence to discuss the then-recent disintegration of his marriage was more than understandable, but a tangible sense of restraint concerning any number of potentially hot-button topics left little of interest. His 2fm colleague Fanning admitted in these pages last week that his own newly-published memoirs are "very guarded".

The Irish political memoir is a particularly turgid genre: recent years have seen a procession of monumentally dull and self-aggrandising volumes, from Albert Reynolds' My Autobiography to Bertie Ahern's maturely recollected autobiography, whereupon the misunderstood architects of our broke nation afford themselves the opportunity to present heavily subjective cases for their wonderfulness. File under H, for Hard-Necked Hagiography. Where are The Secret Diaries of Charlie Haughey when you need them?

Then there are the exceptions. Roy Keane's Keane offers the definitive portrait of the Dark Prince of Irish soccer. Every well-crafted page of Keane smacks of ghost writer Eamon Dunphy – who, lest we forget, himself penned one of the great Irish sporting autobiographies, Only A Game? Diary Of A Professional Footballer.

No one could have foreseen that the late Nuala Ó Faoláin would become a literary superstar with her remarkable (and remarkably frank) Are You Somebody? Nor could they have anticipated that car dealer turned TV idol Bill Cullen would mine the lucrative market for amiable poverty porn so successfully with his bestselling (and frequently hilarious) It's A Long Way From Penny Apples.

Other tomes offer any amount of unanticipated (and unintended) delights: a true cult classic for connoisseurs of the form is gossip columnist turned Sinatra impersonator Jason O'Callaghan's self-published life story Behind The Velvet Rope, a choice guilty pleasure noteworthy – amongst many other reasons – for the bit where the author gets (allegedly) glassed by a fiery Irish beauty queen.

In the end, however, it speaks volumes (literally) that the most forthright – and best-selling – Irish memoirist of the modern age is 100% fictional: long after the current pack have been pulped, we'll still be lapping up the focking hilarious writings of Foxrock philosopher Ross O'Carroll Kelly. Now that's what we call a true loife story.

Three to read immediately: bypass others and head for these winners

An Irish Voice by Niall O'Dowd

The publisher of the NYC-based Irish Voice newspaper details his journey from penniless Irish immigrant to playing a key role in the Northern peace process.

Come What May by Dónal Óg Cusack

The controversial autobiography of the Cork hurler – Ireland's first openly gay sportsman – made headlines worldwide upon publication. A compelling and articulate portrait of an unlikely hero, and an inspirational and important story.

The Freshmen Unzipped by Derek Dean

The only book you ever need to read about the showband era is this tale of life in the musical trenches from the former Freshmen singer. By turns tragic and truly hilarious: Pat McCabe should do the screenplay for the movie.

Three we want to read: autobiogs that badly need to be written

Twink

There are two Twinks: the trooper who turns up on the Late Late sharing her troubles with the nation, and the wronged hellcat behind the legendary 'Zip Up Your Mickey' phone message. Sign up the latter.

PJ Mara

Fianna Fáil's legendary spin doctor knows where all the bodies are buried. What we wouldn't give for a book that finally tells the truth behind the last 30 years of Irish politics.

Gavin Lambe-Murphy

If anyone's going to pen the definitive chronicle of our years of excess, it's the bizarre, self-mythologising 'It Boy' who defined the era.