Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
Review [published March 2005]
Charlie Brooker: Screen Burn
Ben Granger
I judge newspaper TV reviewers by a very high standard
indeed. Why the hell shouldn’t I? Let’s face it, this
is the dream job any human being can have. Sitting,
scratching your mardy arse whilst staring out the flickers
that would bombard your face anyway and getting
paid for it. Jesus! They have to be very entertaining
indeed to offset the sickening pang of envy I get while
reading one. They rarely live up.
For a few years Jim Shelley aka Tapehead in The
Guardian Guide managed to fit the bill. He was witty,
acerbic, mostly accurate, and excreted his metaphysical
bile duct in a pleasingly over-the-top manner. When
he left in 2000 I was deeply worried (what a dangerous
existence I lead!) Which safe trendoid would cast their
yawnsome ‘wry eye’ over events now? But thankfully
they didn’t choose the safe option, they chose Charlie
Brooker. And he made Shelley look like an amalgam of
Dennis Norden and Jenny Bond.
Put aside any justifiable lit-snobbery you may have in
thinking that a collection of TV reviews cannot make a
great book. In 99% of cases you’d be right, but not here.
Brooker’s is a glorious, venomous vision which blasts
BUY Charlie Brooker books online from and
acidly over modern society with TV as its launch-pad.
Brooker’s writing persona is self-deprecating,
neurotic, unpretentious, and above all seriously pissed
off at the televisual shite shovelled his way. He
has a real genius for brief, cutting description which
highlights its victim as expertly as it destroys them.
In the main, his scatological, violent epigrams simply
speak for themselves. Rarely as gut-churningly
offensive as his XXX rated old web site TV Go Home
they are probably more effective and hilarious for their
relative subtlety (we’re talking very relative here.) Try
these for size:
– On The Generation Game: “Jim scampers onstage,
winking and twitching like a man with a fish-hook
stuck in his glans, and immediately launches into a
comic pantomime of such awkward, ill-conceived
clunkiness, you can’t help but wonder if its been
scripted by a human with a laptop or a dog with a
Fisher Price Activity Centre.”
– On Davina McCall: “It’s like her brain’s been
spooned out and replaced by a rotating glitter-ball.”
– On a Steps TV special: “Ho ho ho, we all love Steps
112
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