Hello. I'd like to buy a book please!

[ian]

What book?

I don't really care, I'm just in a real mood to buy a book!

book.jpg

I had no idea Graham Linehan had written a new book, except for woke twitter users making such a noise attempting to cancel Richard Ayoade. If they'd just shut the fuck up I wouldn't have known what Linehan was up to at all. But they alerted me to his book, and I have since bought it from Amazon. I don't know if it's any good or not, but it was under $20 with shipping, and I've enjoyed all his work so far. (I also started watching Black books again)

[Roofus]

Graham Linehan is a piece of shit. He's compared trans people to nazis and pedophiles. I'm not going to argue about that. I went and looked up what Richard Ayoade said. Here's the quote:

Graham Linehan has long been one of my favourite writers – and this book shows that his brilliance in prose is equal to his brilliance as a screenwriter. It unfolds with the urgency of a Sam Fuller film: that of a man who has been through something that few have experienced but has managed to return, undaunted, to tell us the tale.

That's about as bland and generic as it gets. They're just friends and Moss did him a favor. He probably didn't even read it.

I didn't bother looking up what Jonathan Woss said. I don't give a shit about him.

[ian]

Graham Linehan is a piece of shit. He's compared trans people to nazis and pedophiles. I'm not going to argue about that.

I didn't follow his life closely enough to know what the whole deal was. I remember a while back wanting to see what the next show was and seeing that he got ran off of twitter for being a prick and then instead of dropping the whole thing and going back to being funny, really digging in to it. Which is a shame.

He makes me laugh, and has for a long time, so this book interests me.
If the same people involved in calling out Linehan for being a prick hadn't attempted to drag Ayoade down for doing literally nothing wrong I wouldn't have even known this book was a thing.

I didn't bother looking up what Jonathan Woss said.

[Roofus]

Graham Linehan is a piece of shit. He's compared trans people to nazis and pedophiles. I'm not going to argue about that.

I didn't follow his life closely enough to know what the whole deal was. I remember a while back wanting to see what the next show was and seeing that he got ran off of twitter for being a prick and then instead of dropping the whole thing and going back to being funny, really digging in to it. Which is a shame.

He makes me laugh, and has for a long time, so this book interests me.
If the same people involved in calling out Linehan for being a prick hadn't attempted to drag Ayoade down for doing literally nothing wrong I wouldn't have even known this book was a thing.

I didn't bother looking up what Jonathan Woss said.

Don't get me wrong. I still love his shows and I'll check out the next one if there ever is one. I separate the art from the artist with him.

That said, even at the time I thought The Speech episode was weirdly transphobic for no reason and even out of character for Douglas. He's too horny to care.

[ian]

But that fight was funny, AND happens to be in one of the funniest episodes. This box IS the internet!

I didn't even make the connection to it being transphobic till after he spewed the hate. It WAS just another surreal situation joked about. before it unfortunately became real spreaded hate.

Of all the things that could be offensive, a sitcom is just the last thing you can think to be upset at. To think people are so upset that she's from Iran!


I'll let you know if the book is any good when I have a chance over Christmas to read it, if it's shit and filled with hate and not funny, I won't recommend it. If it is a good story/insightful and funny I'll recommend it and lend it to people I know who liked his work. And I know a lot of people who at one point or another loved his shows. Just about every one I know liked at least one of them.

Even my uncle who's never touched a computer in his entire life and watches less TV than any other person I've ever met LOVED the I.T. Crowd. Even he might be interested in the book, if it's any good.

[ian]

Well the book answers it's sub title. How I made and lost a career in comedy.

Yep. There are genuinely good and insightful parts of the book, unfortunately it spends as much time ranting about a perceived trans agenda under the guise of supporting women's rights.

The big tragedy of it all is that he actually makes a lot of good and perfectly valid points in his endless rants, but then undermines them all digging in and droning on and on. With all the points that are actually sensible being entirely buried under being a bit of a prick, it's practically impossible to support him or his cause or offer up much sympathy for his destroyed comedy career.

The book shows what happened exactly. He spends all of 2 pages talking about Black Books and entire chapters ranting about everything trans all while name dropping when convenient and omitting names when you get the sense he's talking out of his ass to suit the narrative he wants.

The problem I have with these parts of the book is that he has a real tendency to treat anecdotal evidence the same way he treats actual statistics and is more than happy to cite a single occurrence of a negative event as reflecting all trans people.

It's a shame I can't really recommend this book for the reasons I wanted to read it. It's simply not funny enough most of the time. Incredibly insightful, but not funny.

But in not being funny, it does indeed achieve what it sets out to and explains in great detail exactly what happened and why you won't see one of the greatest sitcom writers of all time anymore.

He'd rather be a prick than write some jokes.
It wasn't him being cancelled, it's him not being funny anymore to focus all of his time and talents on attacking an extremely small subset of marginalised people that ended the comedy career. It really is a shame.

If he ever wants to create or co-create a Father Ted, or Black Books, or I.T Crowd, or Count Arthur Strong again, FANTASTIC! I'm all in. But it seems like that won't happen. He can't blame woke Twitter users, or innocent trans people, or anyone not wanting to work with him for the lost career. But as long as he does blame them and digs himself further into to hate, then a great talent has been lost.

2 out of 5 stars. (4 if the endless rants were replaced with more information about Black Books and Count Arthur Strong.