Download or read book A Class Act written by Rob Beckett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-05-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Pacy, witty and affectionate' Guardian Rob Beckett never seems to fit in. At work, in the middle-class world of television and comedy, he's the laddy, cockney geezer but to his mates down the pub in south-east London, he's the theatrical one, a media luvvy. Even his wife and kids are posher than him.
Download or read book The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm written by Norman Hunter and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rediscover Professor Branestawm this Christmas – soon to become a brand new drama on BBC ONE written by Charlie Higson and starring Harry Hill ‘Once you started anything in Professor Branestawm’s house you never knew when it might finish or even if it ever would’ Poor Mrs Flittersnoop! It’s not easy being Professor Branestawm’s housekeeper. People may say he’s a genius, but all his inventions always make life more complicated, alarming and extraordinary than it was before. An innocent bottle of old cough mixture turns out to be an elixir that makes all the waste paper in the bin come to life, the burglar-catcher and the pancake-maker operate just a little too efficiently, and about the spring-cleaning machine, the less said the better. You could write a book about it, but nobody would believe it. Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can find out about accidental inventions that changed our lives and try a few experiments of your own! Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Download or read book Faithful Ruslan written by Georgi Vladimov and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unavailable for twenty years, this harrowing allegory of obedience to authority is esteemed as “one of the defining literary texts of the post-Stalin period.” (The Guardian) Set in a remote Siberian depot immediately following the demolition of one of the gulag’s notorious camps and the emancipation of its prisoners, Faithful Ruslan is an embittered cri de coeur from a writer whose circumstances obliged him to resist the violence of arbitrary power. “Every writer who writes anything in this country is made to feel he has committed a crime,” Georgi Vladimov said. Dissident, he said, is a word that “they force on you.” His mother, a victim of Stalin’s anti-Semitic policy, had been interred for two years in one of the camps from which Vladimov derived the wrenching detail of Faithful Ruslan. The novel circulated in samizdat for more than a decade, often attributed to Solzhenitsyn, before its publication in the West led to Vladimov’s harassment and exile. A starving stray, tortured and abandoned by the godlike “Master” whom he has unconditionally loved, Ruslan and his cadre of fellow guard dogs dutifully wait for the arrival of new prisoners—but the unexpected arrival of a work party provokes a climactic bloodletting. Fashioned from the perceptions of an uncomprehending animal, Vladimov’s insistently ironic indictment of the gulag spirals to encompass all of Man’s inexplicable cruelty.
Download or read book We Need to Talk About Kevin Bridges written by Kevin Bridges and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The comic autobiography of 2014 A comedian's autobiography? I wonder if he's ever used humour to deflect from his insecurities? To avoid being bullied? Is there heartache behind the humour? I wonder if he's a manic-depressive? Tears of a clown? Yes, all of that. Discover the hilarious life-story of one of Britain's best-loved comedians in Kevin Bridges' brilliant memoir. 'First of all, I have never written a book before, you probably haven't either, so there we have it; a connection is established between reader and writer . . .' Aged just 17, Kevin Bridges walked on stage for the first time in a Glasgow comedy club and brought the house down. He only had a five-minute set but in that short time he discovered that he really could earn a living from making people laugh. Kevin began life as a shy, nerve-ridden school-boy, whose weekly highlights included a cake-bombing attack by the local youths. Reaching his teens, he followed his true calling as the class clown, and was soon after arrested for kidnapping Hugh Grant from his local cinema on a quiet Saturday night. This was a guy going somewhere - off the rails seeming most likely. Kevin's trademark social commentary, sharp one-liners and laugh-out-loud humour blend with his reflections on his Glaswegian childhood and the journey he's taken to become one of the most-loved comedians of our time. '. . . Hopefully now you'll take this over to the till and I can accompany you for the next wee while. That's the benefit of book shops, reading the little bit and then deciding if the author deserves to be part of your carefully selected 3 for 2 deal, or part of your plane journey, train journey, your next bath, your next shite.' Praise for Kevin Bridges: 'The Best Scottish Stand up of his Generation.' The Scotsman 'A wonderfully dry and deadpan Glaswegian comic . . . one the most exciting talents to have emerged from Scotland since Billy Connolly' Guardian 'Kevin Bridges might just become the best stand-up in the land . . . he will go and deliver a one-liner that you want to jot down and frame' The Times 'Wonderfully sharp, assured stand-up from the preternaturally gifted young comic' Independent
Download or read book Kill the Boy Band written by Goldy Moldavsky and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling debut story of four superfan friends whose devotion to their favorite band has darkly comical and deadly results. Just know from the start that it wasn’t supposed to go like this. All we wanted was to get near them. That’s why we got a room in the hotel where they were staying. We were not planning to kidnap one of them. Especially not the most useless one. But we had him—his room key, his cell phone, and his secrets. We were not planning on what happened next. We swear. Praise for Kill the Boy Band “Moldavsky’s sharp, shocking debut is like no other.” —Entertainment Weekly “Fiercely entertaining . . . One of the smartest YA releases of the year.” —New York Daily News “Misery for the Belieber generation.” —Observer.com “Boy bands gets the Heathers treatment in this madcap macabre . . . A sendup of the artificiality of the fame-making machine from both sides, the novel’s humor is mercilessly black, and no one comes up smelling like roses.” —Kirkus Reviews “Wickedly funny.” —NPR.org “Bitingly satirical.” —Publishers Weekly “[For] anyone who’s ever had the fortune-or misfortune-of being a fan.” —Booklist “Hilarious . . . A must-have.” —School Library Journal
Download or read book Comedy and Distinction written by Sam Friedman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was shortlisted for the 2015 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. Comedy is currently enjoying unprecedented growth within the British culture industries. Defying the recent economic downturn, it has exploded into a booming billion-pound industry both on TV and on the live circuit. Despite this, academia has either ignored comedy or focused solely on analysing comedians or comic texts. This scholarship tends to assume that through analysing an artist’s intentions or techniques, we can somehow understand what is and what isn’t funny. But this poses a fundamental question – funny to whom? How can we definitively discern how audiences react to comedy? Comedy and Distinction shifts the focus to provide the first ever empirical examination of British comedy taste. Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews carried out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the book explores what types of comedy people like (and dislike), what their preferences reveal about their sense of humour, how comedy taste lubricates everyday interaction, and how issues of social class, gender, ethnicity and geographical location interact with patterns of comic taste. Friedman asks: Are some types of comedy valued higher than others in British society? Does more ‘legitimate’ comedy taste act as a tangible resource in social life – a form of cultural capital? What role does humour play in policing class boundaries in contemporary Britain? This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, social class, social theory, cultural studies and comedy studies.
Download or read book A Book for Her written by Bridget Christie and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridget Christie is a stand-up comedian, idiot and feminist. On the 30th of April 2012, a man farted in the Women’s Studies Section of a bookshop and it changed her life forever. A Book For Her details Christie’s twelve years of anonymous toil in the bowels of stand-up comedy and the sudden epiphany that made her, unbelievably, one of the most critically acclaimed British stand-up comedians this decade, drawing together the threads that link a smelly smell in the women’s studies section to the global feminist struggle. Find out how nice Peter Stringfellow’s fish tastes, how yoghurt advertising perpetuates rape myths, and how Emily Bronte used a special ladies’ pen to write Wuthering Heights. If you’re interested in comedy and feminism, then this is definitely the book for you. If you hate both then I’d probably give it a miss. “Christie is adept at turning on a sixpence between being comical, or serious, or both at once, and at pricking her own earnestness.” Telegraph ‘Christie piles derision and tomfoolery upon everyday sexism, while never pretending that jokes alone will solve the problem.’ Guardian
Download or read book Upstart Crow written by Ben Elton and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This does indeed deserve comparisons with Blackadder" Radio Times "A knockabout, well-researched take on the working and domestic life of Shakespeare." The Guardian It’s the 1590s. William Shakespeare – brought to life on screen by the inimitable David Mitchell – is at the start of his career. But no one is taking him seriously. In London, he is mercilessly mocked by his rivals and at home in Stratford he is belittled by his sullen teenage daughter. Yet he is determined to find an ending for his newest creation Romeo and Juliet. Luckily, inspiration is forthcoming. The trials and tribulations of his closest friends and family reveal the plot twists he’d been missing. And not only for this famous tragedy but for many of his finest plays. With sparkling wordplay, hilarious gags and his trademark wit, Ben Elton celebrates the great William Shakespeare and reveals the startling stories behind the playwright’s best-known plays.
Download or read book The New Me written by Halle Butler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] definitive work of millennial literature . . . wretchedly riveting." —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker “Girls + Office Space + My Year of Rest and Relaxation + anxious sweating = The New Me.” —Entertainment Weekly I'm still trying to make the dream possible: still might finish my cleaning project, still might sign up for that yoga class, still might, still might. I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind. Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. She spends her days working a thankless temp job and her nights alone in her apartment, fixating on all the ways she might change her situation--her job, her attitude, her appearance, her life. Then she watches TV until she falls asleep, and the cycle begins again. When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of how hollow that vision has become. "Wretchedly riveting" (The New Yorker) and "masterfully cringe-inducing" (Chicago Tribune), The New Me is the must-read new novel by National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree and Granta Best Young American novelist Halle Butler. Named a Best Book of the Decade by Vox, and a Best Book of 2019 by Vanity Fair, Vulture, Chicago Tribune, Mashable, Bustle, and NPR
Download or read book The Golden House written by Salman Rushdie and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A modern American epic set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture—a hurtling, page-turning mystery that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, PBS, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Financial Times, The Times of India On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family. Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons: agoraphobic, alcoholic Petya, a brilliant recluse with a tortured mind; Apu, the flamboyant artist, sexually and spiritually omnivorous, famous on twenty blocks; and D, at twenty-two the baby of the family, harboring an explosive secret even from himself. There is no mother, no wife; at least not until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian expat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king—a queen in want of an heir. Our guide to the Goldens’ world is their neighbor René, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household. Seduced by their mystique, he is inevitably implicated in their quarrels, their infidelities, and, indeed, their crimes. Meanwhile, like a bad joke, a certain comic-book villain embarks upon a crass presidential run that turns New York upside-down. Set against the strange and exuberant backdrop of current American culture and politics, The Golden House also marks Salman Rushdie’s triumphant and exciting return to realism. The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention—a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age.
Download or read book Mack The Life written by Lee Mack and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘His book is a joy to read, full of homespun wisdom and hilarious asides’ Independent ____________________ Where do comedians come from? Why is it that one person is a funny bloke down the pub while another actually makes a living by standing up in front of an audience telling jokes? And where does all that material come from? Well, young Lee McKillop used to wonder that too. ___________________ Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention. After a somewhat random series of jobs, which included being Red Rum’s stableboy and a bingo hall barman, it was as a Great Yarmouth holiday camp entertainer that he had his first crack at telling jokes on stage. It got him some laughs, the sack and a punch in the face.* Now, as Lee Mack, he’s one of our best loved and most successful comedians, both as a live stand-up and on television. In Mack the Life, Lee tells the story of how he got there and gives extraordinary insight into what really makes comics tick. Hilarious and brilliant, it’s the kind of book which reminds you why you learned to read in the first place. *Nearly.
Download or read book The Adulterants written by Joe Dunthorne and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of Roddy Doyle, Nick Hornby, and Mark Haddon, The Adulterants is a piercingly funny—and cringingly poignant—take on how hard it is to grow up and how hard it is when you don’t. Ray Morris is a tech journalist with a forgettable face, a tiresome manner, a small but dedicated group of friends, and a wife, Garthene, who is pregnant. He is a man who has never been punched above the neck. He has never committed adultery with his actual body. He has never been caught up in a riot, nor arrested, nor tagged by the state, nor become an international hate-figure. Not until the summer of 2011, when discontent is rising on the streets and within his marriage. Ray has noticed none of this. Not yet. The Adulterants would be a coming-of-age story if its protagonist could only forget that he is thirty-three years old. Throughout a series of escalating catastrophes, our deadpan antihero keeps up a merciless mental commentary on the foibles and failings of those around him, and the vicissitudes of modern urban life: internet trolls, buy-to-let landlords, open marriages, and the threat posed by more sensitive men. But the wonder of The Adulterants is how we feel ourselves rooting for Ray even as we acknowledge that he deserves everything he gets.
Download or read book Ramble Book Musings on Childhood Friendship Family and 80s Pop Culture written by Adam Buxton and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK ‘An affectionate and revealing account ... Funny, sad, real, rueful.’ The Times ‘Warm, rambling and self-aware’ Guardian The long-awaited, rambling, tender, and very funny memoir from Adam Buxton
Download or read book Windswept Interesting written by Billy Connolly and published by Two Roads. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting life. Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of 4, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy's life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds. Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde. Later he became a folk musician - a 'rambling man' - with a genuine talent for playing the banjo. But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart. As a young comedian Billy broke all the rules. He was fearless and outspoken - willing to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. But his stand-up was full of warmth, humility and silliness too. His startling, hairy 'glam-rock' stage appearance - wearing leotards, scissor suits and banana boots - only added to his appeal. It was an appearance on Michael Parkinson's chat show in 1975 - and one outrageous story in particular - that catapulted Billy from cult hero to national star. TV shows, documentaries, international fame and award-winning Hollywood movies followed. Billy's pitch-perfect stand-up comedy kept coming too - for over 50 years, in fact - until a double diagnosis of cancer and Parkinson's Disease brought his remarkable live performances to an end. Since then he has continued making TV shows, creating extraordinary drawings... and writing. Windswept and Interesting is Billy's story in his own words. It is joyfully funny - stuffed full of hard-earned wisdom as well as countless digressions on fishing, farting and the joys of dancing naked. It is an unforgettable, life-affirming story of a true comedy legend. 'I didn't know I was Windswept and Interesting until somebody told me. It was a friend who was startlingly exotic himself. He'd just come back from Kashmir and was all billowy shirt and Indian beads. I had long hair and a beard and was swishing around in electric blue flairs. He said: "Look at you - all windswept and interesting!" I just said: "Exactly!" After that, I simply had to maintain my reputation...'
Download or read book Pure Drivel written by Steve Martin and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2024-04-09 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brilliantly funny New York Times Bestseller! Steve Martin's talent has always defied definition: a seasoned actor, a razor-sharp screenwriter, an acclaimed playwright, and, of course, the ingenious comedian who turned King Tut into a national craze. In this widely praised collection of humorous riffs, Martin shows he is a master of the written word. From a re-imagining of the Schroedinger's Cat conundrum to a wild meditation on who Lolita would be at age fifty to a skit entitled "I Love Loosely", in which Lucy and Ricky Ricardo play the parts of Hillary and President Clinton, this collection by comic genius Steve Martin--some pieces of which have appeared in The New Yorker--is both hilariously funny and intelligent in its skewering of the topic at hand.
Download or read book March of the Lemmings written by Stewart Lee and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a Metropolitan Elitist Snowflake, Stewart Lee was disappointed by the Brexit referendum result of 2016. But he knew how to weaponise his inconvenience. He would treat all his subsequent writing, until we left the EU, as interrelated episodes of a complete work. The cast of characters include Lemming-obsessed Michael Gove, violent tanning-salon entrepreneur Tommy Robinson and Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Bumboys Letterbox Cake Disaster Weightloss Haircut Bullshit Johnson. A dramatic chorus is made up of online commenters and Kremlin bots. And Lee himself would play the defeated, unreliable narrator-hero, whose resolve and tolerance would gradually unravel as the horror show dragged on. Until the 29 March, 2019, when it would all definitely be over Drawing on three years of newspaper columns, a complete transcript of the Content Provider stand-up show, and Lee's caustic footnote commentary, March of the Lemmings is the scathing, riotous record the Brexit era deserves.
Download or read book I Partridge written by Steve Coogan and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2011 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journalist, presenter, broadcaster, husband, father, vigorous all-rounder - Alan Partridge - a man with a fascinating past and an amazing future. Gregarious and popular, yet Alan's never happier than when relaxing in his own five-bedroom, south-built house with three acres of land and access to a private stream. But who is this mysterious enigma? Alan Gordon Partridge is the best - and best-loved - radio presenter in the region. Born into a changing world of rationing, Teddy Boys, apes in space and the launch of ITV, Alan's broadcasting career began as chief DJ of Radio Smile at St. Luke's Hospital in Norwich. After replacing Peter Flint as the presenter of Scout About, he entered the top 8 of BBC sports presenters. But Alan's big break came with his primetime BBC chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You. Sadly, the show battled against poor scheduling, having been put up against News at Ten, then in its heyday. Due to declining ratings, a single catastrophic hitch (the killing of a guest on air) and the dumbing down of network TV, Alan's show was cancelled. Not to be dissuaded, he embraced this opportunity to wind up his production company, leave London and fulfil a lifelong ambition to return to his roots in local radio. Now single, Alan is an intensely private man but he opens up, for the second time, in this candid, entertaining, often deeply emotional - and of course compelling - memoir, written entirely in his own words. (Alan quickly dispelled the idea of using a ghost writer. With a grade B English Language O-Level, he knew he was up to the task.) He speaks touchingly about his tragic Toblerone addiction, and the painful moment when unsold copies of his first autobiography, Bouncing Back, were pulped like 'word porridge'. He reveals all about his relationship with his ex-Ukrainian girlfriend, Sonja, with whom he had sex at least twice a day, and the truth about the thick people who make key decisions at the BBC. A literary tour de force, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan charts the incredible journey of one of our greatest broadcasters.
