I agree, most of them are crap, but Stephen Fry's 'The Liar' and Nigel Planer's "I An Actor" are both bloody funny. But Baddiel and Newman should both be shot for their crimes against literature.

What stops them having a right?
Most comedians these days are writers. Why shouldn't they have a go at novels?
I admit many of the novels they have written have been not great, but that's alos true of novels by journalists like Tony Parsons etc. So what is it that means journalists are allowed to go over to novel writing and not comedians? Is it cos novels are meant to be serious?
At the end of the day it happens cos publishers know the book will sell. So it's up to you the public not to buy the books if you want to stop them being printed!

Quite so. If you only buy a book because a famous person has written it, don't expect higher quality than that John McCarthy thing.

If comedians were barred from writing novels, we wouldn't have The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry, which is very funny and also has a serious point about believing in facts and reason rather than homeopathy. It's better than The Liar, which is just Fry's autobiography with a few obvious changes.
But it is wrong of comedians to cash in on their reputations to publish novels which wouldn't have made it into print from an <coughAdrianEdmonsoncoughcough> excuse me, from an unknown. <HuuuuuuuuuughLauriespit>.
I have not been well.

I think novels is better cos you get more pages and more pages means more jokes and laughter and fun.

>If comedians were barred from writing novels, we wouldn't have The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry, which is very funny and also has a serious point about believing in facts and reason rather than homeopathy. It's better than The Liar, which is just Fry's autobiography with a few obvious changes.

I think all of Stephen Fry's novels bear comparison with anything produced by a 'proper' novelist, for want of a far better way of putting it.

>But it is wrong of comedians to cash in on their reputations to publish novels which wouldn't have made it into print from an <coughAdrianEdmonsoncoughcough> excuse me, from an unknown. <HuuuuuuuuuughLauriespit>.

I've not read Adrian Edmonson's (I read a review, which warned me off), but I believe I'm right in saying that Hugh Laurie's novel was submitted to an agent under a pseudonym. I didn't think it was that bad a read meself, but in no way comparable with Stephen Fry's.

Hugh's manuscript was submitted under a pseudonym - his two middle names - and he's never seemed to have been happy about the decision to publish it under his real name - pressure from publishers and maybe his agent? Anyway, I'd recommend you read it without any Laurie-related preconceptions and give it a fair hearing - I still think it's an excellent and affectionate tribute to a genre he's clearly loved for years.

All right, it's not 'The Hippopotamus'. But then neither's 'Making History', come to that.

I haven't actually read any of Fry's novels but that's not going to stop me calling the man a wanker. I did attempt two pages of Hippopotamus but I found his style rather predictable and corny. I suppose the main problem I have with Fry is that I don't find him as intelligent as he believes himself to be. To me Fry comes across as smug self-congratulating twat, and not, as he believes himself to be : a bit of thinker.

As for comedians writing books I certainly don't have a problem with that. The problem starts when the buggers get them published and then get all their friends to write flattering blurbs in order to con the public into buying them. Let's take this as an example:

�...very, very funny, but also manages to stay on the right side of realistic...I thought the book was terrific.�

Now where do you think that comes from? Would you believe it's Soddy Doyle's blurb for David Baddiel's Time For Bed? Here's just a little taste of David's prose:


�My father is the WBC (Wanking Bastard Cunt) Heavyweight Champion of Swearing. The appellation 'wankbag' is just at the beginning of his range. 'Cunthead', 'Tossturner', 'Fuckslob', Hairy Great Pudding-Face Arsewank' �thirty-two years with my mother has really stretched his linguistic invention...�

In case you're puzzled the joke is the bit at the end (you couldn't call it a punch line ) the �really stretched his linguistic invention� part. The only people who are more reckless than David with their use of paper is Mcdonalds. This sorry waste of a tree goes on for 282 pages, and cost me £14.99.

�Right side of realistic�? Right bloody take on.

"a bit of a thinker"

Sod any more mistakes

Gee, it's obvious you have a sure grasp of the essentials of the English comic novel. Why don't you write one yourself?

I liked Ben Eltons novels, although I enjoy each new one a bit less than the last. ie "stark" was my favorite, and I havent bothered reading that last one about having babies cos it sounded a bit pants.

Eric Idle's Hello Sailor had its moments of hilarity (although I was only fourteen when I read it). And Charlie Higson is to be applauded for trying to do something other than comedy novels, although his ideas aren't always served brilliantly by his grasp of language. But one thing which does piss me off is when comedians rehash their stand-up routines in their novels. An example of this is David Baddiel - the routine on the "Too Much Information" video about Frank Skinner waiting for him to go to bed so he could watch a porn video downstairs - that bit is used almost verbatim in Time For Bed.

What about politicians who write novels?

They're even worse.

At least most comics write to begin with.

I should like to point out that Gee and Gee Whizz are not the same person.

>What about politicians who write novels?
>
>They're even worse.
>
>At least most comics write to begin with.

Disraeli's 'Sybil' is supposed to be pretty good - although that is going back a bit. What other politicos have written novels? I can only think of three: Roy Hattersley, Douglas Hurd and Edwina Currie. Unless you count Jeffrey Archer - but then who does?

Anne Widdecome - never read it though. "The Clitoris Tree" or something. A way for her to get rid of her frustrations.
Ken Follett - written a few competent thrillers e.g. Eye Of The Needle. Good beach reading.
I fear Gyles Brandreth has by now.

I think it's a bit harsh to dismiss Stephen Fry's style as "corny" or whatever after only reading 2 pages. The narrator of the novel is supposed to be a bit of a reactionary - however, any novel which starts with the excellent pun on "jacking into the matrix" deserves another go.
The style and narrative of The Hippopotamus has always reminded me of Kingsley Amis' novels. There's the hero (promiscuous, reactionary hard-drinking middle-aged poet), the plot hinging on the solution to a puzzle (a common Amis device), the hero being forced to drive in the rain despite not knowing how (One Fat Englishman), the compassionate but slightly patronising treatment of the gay character (e.g. Anti-Death League). It's almost as if Fry has consciously decided to pastiche Amis, or even base the central character on him (Amis was a poet as well as a novelist).

I can usually tell if someone has a talent for writing after only two or three pages. I found the Aims part of your comments rather interesting. I haven't read any Aim (I've read London Fields by the boy), although I did have a stab at A Girl Like You but found it a bit dull.

Try Lucky Jim, The Anti-Death League, The Egyptologists (with someone else). Stanley and The Women if you are a misogynist. And he also wrote Colonel Sun by "Robert Markham", which is a cracking Bond novel/pastiche.

I've got Lucky Jim but I have got round to reading it yet. A few people have told me that it's very funny. I believe Kingsley was rather to the left in his younger days, so it probably doesn't suffer from the old man's eccentric ramblings

I haven't read The Hippopotamus, but I read an interview at the time in which Fry admitted the central character was based on the bisexual novelist Simon Raven, who is old and out-of-fashion nowadays, but had quite a profile during the 60s and 70s, both as a writer and reviewer, and would no doubt have been read by the young Fry. He was a Cambridge English academic, had a brief Army career, had loads of affairs with other men&women, had a family, wrote about 30 novels. He was still publishing in the late 80s, and he got biographized around 93 (I know about him through reading a review) but I don't think anyone's much bothered these days. He might be dead now, for all I know.

I defend David Baddiels novels.I found them extremely readable and laughed out loud several times embarrassingly on public transport.Whatever Love Means, although hilarious in parts, is very bleak by the end as a warning to potential readers looking for a jolly peruse on holiday.
What about Mark (League of Gents)Gattis s biography of film director James Whale? Is that allowed? or must Gattis stay in his nice little pigeonhole that the great British media so demand.
Perhaps Harry Hill should have stuck to the medical proffession and while we are at it How dare Sir Sean Connery leave the dairy delivery trade!
I would be very interested to read a novel by Richard Herring and Stewart Lee too or is that not intellectual as reading Kurt Vonnegutt etc?

S. Lee has supposedly written a novel, publication delayed by other work.

<Perhaps Harry Hill should have stuck to the medical proffession



There's really no 'perhaps' about it.

It is monumentally depressing that Arabella Weir got a publishing deal to write a book based on a Fast Show character that wasn't remotely funny in the first place. The publisher probably had the same attitude as that old vulture on the Amy Jenkins programme - TV viewers = potential novel buyers. It just seems to be an insanely cynical marketing ploy, designed to sell the most units possible before the book reviews come out and everybody realises it's crap. Nobody seems to care about longevity any more - I'd be very surprised if any current comedian's attempts at a novel was greeted with anything other than hoots of derision in ten or fifteen years time. And no, I'm not being snobbish or drawing a distinction between high and low art (Chris Morris and Stephen Fry, when they're really on form, are easily comparable to the likes of Flann O'Brien or James Joyce in their uses of language) or slagging off all comedians who write novels, but there just seems to be such a lot of comedians' novels, like their acts, are lazy and slapdash.

>there just seems to be such a lot of comedians' novels, like their acts, are lazy and slapdash.


'Blast From The Past', anyone?

Alan said:

<And no, I'm not being snobbish or drawing a distinction between high and low art (Chris Morris and Stephen Fry, when they're really on form, are easily comparable to the likes of Flann O'Brien or James Joyce in their uses of language)...


That's the trouble with these weekend postings, some people write in pissed.

>Alan said:
>
><And no, I'm not being snobbish or drawing a distinction between high and low art (Chris Morris and Stephen Fry, when they're really on form, are easily comparable to the likes of Flann O'Brien or James Joyce in their uses of language)...
>
>
>That's the trouble with these weekend postings, some people write in pissed.


So pissed they can't actually tell who wrote what, eh Gee? :)

Shurrup yoush twooo....

Er, yeah, sorry Alan. My mistake, I meant Barney.

Re;Mark gatiss.

he wrote two novels, back in the early Nineties for the Virgin Books Dr Who range. The first was a pretty good paean to Quatermass ('Nightshade') and the second was shit.

I know I'm preaching to the (mostly) converted, but it was amazing to see how talentless Arabella Weir was on that Head On Comedy thing the other night. Men are crap. Fantastic. How relieved she must be that she hung on the coat-tails of the likes of Alexei Sayle and Whitehouse & Higson for long enough in order to get publishing deals for her sub-sub-sub-sub Bridget Jones horsedung.

I remember reading an interview a couple of years ago, where she said "The trouble started when I was asked to write for other people. Disaster. Cannot do that...."

You see, Arabella, that's what being a writer is all about.

No offence though. (Hoorah, another brilliant character.)

Gee, you bastard, how did you know I was pissed when I wrote that? I must have been trying *too* hard to be articulate - always a dead giveaway.

BTW your letters to Danny Wallace are crap.
Sorry I can't be more constructive...

<BTW your letters to Danny Wallace are crap.
Sorry I can't be more constructive...


That's OK because I consider your opinion to be of no value. Sorry I can't be more constructive.

Mia-fucking-ow.

Why can't you 2 just get along? A smile takes less effort than a frown.

I've nothing against Barney Jon. It's only playful tit for tat.

So who's the tit and who's the tat...?

Gee, I have nothing against you either.

Group hug everyone!

Not exactly novels, but Woody Allen's short pieces (mostly from the New Yorker) are very funny - at least on a par with the best of his films. Without Feathers and Side Effects were the collections. "If The Impressionists Were Dentists" is the Official Funniest Thing Ever.

ck to Time For bed: Very strange obsession with anal sex in that book. I remember I was quite scared because my mother hasd bought the book for me (I happened to watch a B&S show once in her presence) and i spent the rest of the month wondering if she'd read it or not.