The Hell of it All
Charlie Brooker
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 0571229573
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
'Mankind clearly peaked about 40 years ago. It's been downhill ever since. For all this talk of our dazzling modern age, the two biggest advances of the past decade are Wi-Fi and Nando's. That's the best we can do'. In his latest laugh-out-loud collection of misanthropic scribblings, hideous Q-list celebrity failure Charlie Brooker tackles everything from the misery of nightclubs to the death of Michael Jackson, making room for Sir Alan Sugar, potato crisps, global financial meltdown, conspiracy theories and Hole in the Wall along the way. The collapse of civilisation has never felt this funny (unless you're a sociopath, in which case it's been an uninterrupted laugh riot since the days of the Somme). This book is guaranteed to brighten your life, put a spring in your step, and lie to you on its back cover.
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pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled ‘sad’ – it’s like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions. Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can’t hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the
impress the reader (who, we now know, probably hasn’t bothered turning up). That’s why so many contemporary novels seem to largely consist of a thinly veiled version of the author discussing politics and art and quantum theory over a carefully selected bottle of wine with the devastatingly beautiful mixed-race wife of an impotent international statesman and/or gangster (delete where applicable) before whisking her off to a swish hotel room to have expert animal sex with her all weekend until a
with frozen eyes, intermittently twitching that smile. Your screen cracks. Hot plasma leaks out. This broadcast is over. In fact Brown’s extended drubbing has gone far beyond mere eeriness, and now teeters on the verge of harrowing spectacle – a protracted humiliation so total, so crushing, that merely witnessing it feels almost as terrible as being the man on its receiving end. It’s like someone’s dropped an indignity bomb directly on his head, and we’re all caught up in the blast. Normally,
words, ‘I say, Godfrey…’ I mean, you ARE being a snob, right? In which case, do it properly – out here, on the other side of your tissue-thin veil of irony; out here where we can see you. Still, two wrongs don’t make a right. Pramface Mansion was an objectionable title all round: the last-minute name-swap is a small victory for our collective human dignity. But the show itself? Whassat? For starters, the new title automatically makes it feel 200 times less exploitative and more like, well, like
episode: fearless, crusading adult volunteers for an anti-paedo watchdog group called Perverted Justice go on the internet and pretend to be 13-year-old girls. They wait until contacted by grown men, play along with the conversation when the subject turns to sex, then invite them over for an illegal fumble. When the men turn up, they’re greeted by an attractive young actress (who could just about pass for 13) who leads them into the garden and asks them to wait by the hot tub while she changes