Books Reviews
HUMOUR NEIL RAFFERTY AND PAUL STOKES Halfwit Nation (Constable) ●●●●●
While Private Eye and The Onion remain the cornerstones of written news satire in print and online respectively, and Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You keep our square eyes tearing, the joyous silliness of spoofing website The Daily Mash shows there’s still endless mileage in pointing out just how bloody stupid the world really is. Stumbling over, through and often on top of
current affairs like some gigantic headed, wobbly- legged, satire-wielding toddler, Halfwit Nation is a bumper compendium, collating the best of the bile and bitumen unleashed on The Daily Mash website and newsletter. The idea was conceived by former newspaper journalists Paul Stokes and Neil Rafferty and started in April 2007. It now claims to be ‘the UK’s most popular satirical news website’. Pitched somewhere between the Daily Mail and the Viz letters page, they ask: ‘Are our seagulls being radicalised by foreign clerics?’ and tell us ‘Glasgow launches bid for Swearing Olympics’, ‘Dubai plans skyscraper made of Fanta’, ‘Darth Vader a Baptist, says Vatican’ and ruminates on the all too timely ponderance ‘Banks fucked’. With incisive journalism like this, in addition to their sexually deviant agony aunt Petula Soul, sagely horoscope compiler Psychic Bob and sensational ‘Worthless Opinion Polls’ – apparently parents are not spending more time with their kids because ‘They’ve swapped them for a breadmaker’ (30%) or ‘They get drunk too quickly’ (31.1%) – it does make you wonder if we actually need real news anymore. (Mark Robertson)
and, on first reckoning, may not be the best person to write a book about objectivity in the media. However this book (which comes with a
POLITICAL STUDY ROD STONEMAN Chávez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Wallflower Press) ●●●●● On its release in 2003, a documentary that fortuitously caught the coup ousting Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez for all of a weekend, caused a furore in that country and elsewhere for its apparent bias. Rod Stoneman was the executive producer on Chávez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
WIN COPIES OF
STEPPING STONES Dennis Driscoll quizzes Nobel Literature Prize winner Seamus Heaney on his career, and his journey from farmboy beginnings in Mossbawn, Northern Ireland to becoming a critically acclaimed, highly politicised poet. The series of interviews is published in Stepping Stones and we have four hardback copies up for grabs. To win, head over to www.list.co.uk by Thursday 11 December.
32 THE LIST 27 Nov–11 Dec 2008
ALSO PUBLISHED
5 AUTO- BIOGRAPHIES
Ted Turner Call Me Ted The media mogul and ex-husband of Jane Fonda talks about family tragedy, CNN, the America’s Cup and his controversial former missus. Sphere. Diahann Carroll
The Legs are the Last to Go Subtitled ‘Ageing, Acting, Marrying and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way’, this is the story of the actress who was married four times and got engaged to David Frost. Amistad.
Anne Rice Called Out of Darkness The author of many a bestselling vampire book writes of her Catholic childhood and her Damascene veering from the path of atheism. Chatto. Charlie Mitchell
Please Don’t Hurt Me, Dad Apparently the ‘misery memoir’ genre has slowed down a bit, but before we all start reading happy clappy stories, here’s the grim tale of a horrible 70s upbringing in a Dundee tenement. Element. Fern Britton Fern: The Autobiography Comedian Wil Hodgson once said that he’d climb over Kylie to get to Fern Britton. Not sure what he now thinks of her all-new slimline look though. Michael Joseph.
lack of sophistication, cynicism and violence. But it doesn’t do much else, and it’s not as evocative of its era or milieu as it should have been. (Miles Fielder)
DVD of the film) is at its best when not resolutely defending the filmmakers, but taking apart the counter arguments levelled at the film. Many of these arguments come from vested interests in Venezuela and the US, and Stoneman picks away at the nature of these interests, as well as exploring the assumptions behind documentary filmmaking, and what is and is not acceptable in a form that can hardly claim categorical objectivity anyway. (Tony McKibbin) CRIME NOVEL NICK BROWNLEE Bait (Piatkus) ●●●●●
In the opening scene of this high-octane crime debut, a victim is eviscerated on a boat while still alive, his steaming innards and gutted body tossed overboard. Welcome to the flipside of African crime fiction where instead of Precious Ramotswe sipping tea in Botswana we have a modern Kenya full of drugs, guns, poverty, prostitution, sex
it’s a brutal but undeniably thrilling ride. (Doug Johnstone) SOCIAL DRAMA CHARLIE OWEN Bravo Jubilee (Headline) ●●●●●
Copper-turned-crime writer Charlie Owen’s third novel is another retro-fitted 1970s police procedural set in a grim Manchester overspill named Handstead aka Horse’s Arse. Picking up the year after the previous book, Foxtrot Oscar, this finds Owen’s rogues gallery of thuggish officers continuing to mete out their brand of brutal justice while Turkish gangster Sercan Ozdemir attempts to extricate himself from his failed bid to exploit the local mafia, snubbed by wily CID boss DCI Harrison.
The ugliness that follows is played out against the rise of football hooliganism, the growth of a burgeoning LSD market and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. In keeping with the currently popular postmodern view of those times (see Life on Mars), Bravo Jubilee positively wallows in a
traffickers, evil crime lords, maniacal former South African army men and corrupt police and officials at every turn. Into this dust storm comes Jake, a washed-up British ex- cop running game fishing trips, and Jouma, seemingly the only Mombasa detective not in the pocket of the bad guys. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about Nick Brownlee’s accomplished debut, but it’s executed with an energy and vigour lacking in much crime fiction. Vividly depicting a society on the verge of collapse and the struggle of the few to hold on to decent values amidst mayhem,