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Dawn Of The Dumb by Charlie Brooker
The Blurb On The Back:
”I don’t get people. What’s their appeal, precisely? They waddle around with their haircuts on, cluttering the pavement like gormless, farting skittles. They’re awful.
Polite, pensive, mature, reserved ... Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Picking up where his hilarious Screen Burn left off, Dawn of the Dumb collects the best of Brooker’s recent TV writing, together with uproarious spleen-venting diatribes on a range of non-televisual subjects – tackling everything from David Cameron to human hair.
Rude, unhinged, outrageous, and above all funny, Dawn of the Dumb is essential reading for anyone with a brain and a spinal cord. And hands for turning the pages.
DAWN OF THE DUMB is a collection of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe column for the Guardian’s entertainment supplement and other columns written for the Guardian’s G2 supplement between October 2004 and July 2007. If you’re a regular Guardian reader or you’re familiar with Brooker’s Screenwipe and Newswipe series on BBC4, then his misanthropic and bleakly hilarious style will be familiar to you. Those who aren’t will be in for a shock.
The prologue is his column from 23 October 2004, which got him into a lot of trouble when his concluding remarks were misinterpreted as a call to assassinate then President George W Bush. Unfortunately, the reproduced column is missing the controversial final paragraph, which seems a little cowardly. It is however replaced with Brooker’s reaction to the furore and a sample of the insane correspondence that he received as a result. This experience is referred to in later columns, providing a common theme.
Brooker’s humour won’t appeal to everyone, but I found myself sniggering at almost every page, particularly his descriptions of David Cameron and a host of reality TV stars. For me, the Screenwipe columns are by far the best, with Brooker’s enthusiasm for the subject really coming through. They’re also an interesting blast from the past as he tackles such programmes as the infamous season of celebrity Big Brother where George Galloway pretended to be a cat and the late Jade Goody racially abused Shilpa Sheppy.
All in all, this was a funny read that would be a good introduction to anyone unfamiliar with Brooker’s work – although the fact that they are newspaper columns will inevitably make them date all too quickly as people forget the underlying source material.
The Verdict:
Bleak, misanthropic and very, very funny, this is a great introduction to Charlie Brooker’s style of writing and well worth a look. Unless your a George W Bush fan, in which case you’ll probably want to give it a miss.
Polite, pensive, mature, reserved ... Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Picking up where his hilarious Screen Burn left off, Dawn of the Dumb collects the best of Brooker’s recent TV writing, together with uproarious spleen-venting diatribes on a range of non-televisual subjects – tackling everything from David Cameron to human hair.
Rude, unhinged, outrageous, and above all funny, Dawn of the Dumb is essential reading for anyone with a brain and a spinal cord. And hands for turning the pages.
DAWN OF THE DUMB is a collection of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe column for the Guardian’s entertainment supplement and other columns written for the Guardian’s G2 supplement between October 2004 and July 2007. If you’re a regular Guardian reader or you’re familiar with Brooker’s Screenwipe and Newswipe series on BBC4, then his misanthropic and bleakly hilarious style will be familiar to you. Those who aren’t will be in for a shock.
The prologue is his column from 23 October 2004, which got him into a lot of trouble when his concluding remarks were misinterpreted as a call to assassinate then President George W Bush. Unfortunately, the reproduced column is missing the controversial final paragraph, which seems a little cowardly. It is however replaced with Brooker’s reaction to the furore and a sample of the insane correspondence that he received as a result. This experience is referred to in later columns, providing a common theme.
Brooker’s humour won’t appeal to everyone, but I found myself sniggering at almost every page, particularly his descriptions of David Cameron and a host of reality TV stars. For me, the Screenwipe columns are by far the best, with Brooker’s enthusiasm for the subject really coming through. They’re also an interesting blast from the past as he tackles such programmes as the infamous season of celebrity Big Brother where George Galloway pretended to be a cat and the late Jade Goody racially abused Shilpa Sheppy.
All in all, this was a funny read that would be a good introduction to anyone unfamiliar with Brooker’s work – although the fact that they are newspaper columns will inevitably make them date all too quickly as people forget the underlying source material.
The Verdict:
Bleak, misanthropic and very, very funny, this is a great introduction to Charlie Brooker’s style of writing and well worth a look. Unless your a George W Bush fan, in which case you’ll probably want to give it a miss.