I CAN MAKE YOU HATE
Charlie Brooker is an angry man.
Charlie Brooker is an angry man…angry and funny…very funny. His book I Can Make You Hate is about encouraging you to hate even more all the things you had already been giving consideration to hating more – like politicians and bad TV. Now you have an advocate and a friend; once you’ve paid the €20 you can hate to your heart’s content like you always wanted to. Like I said, Charlie Brooker is an angry man…and funny…very funny.
The cover of my prized hardback edition features a gilded note: “Includes Words and Punctuation.” On the back you have more pre-opening fun: “Only a pr*** wouldn’t buy this book. Don’t be that PR***.” See, punctuation ‘n’ all, just like he promised.
One last chuckle before you’ve even begun to read what’s inside: “Does not contain free weight-loss, self-esteem and instant happiness CD.”
Oh yeah, I forgot: “The potential all-time No.1 bestseller.”
This book has the funniest cover of any book ever; that’s why I bought it. The cover is a lot funnier than it may seem to you right now; it’s got lots more funny bits that I haven’t yet mentioned but am just about to, like where it says this: “…if you’d like to read something that alternates between ‘funny’ and ‘angry’ like a drunk clown at a divorce hearing, keep holding this book. Ideally, pay for it on your way home.”
Now, let’s open the book and see what else we can choke with laughter in response to!
But before the laughter, here’s some anger: “Sleep is overrated. According to experts, it is as important to your health as exercise, nutrition and not being set on fire…All you have to do is lie around doing nothing for eight hours. So simple, even a corpse could do it.”
And there’s plenty of anger: “TV advertising used to work like this: you sat on your sofa while creatives were paid to throw a bucket of s*** in your face. Today you’re expected to sit on the bucket, fill it with your own s***, and tip it over your head while filming yourself on your mobile. Then you upload the video to the creatives. You do the work; they still get paid.”
It is a little known fact that Brooker is the most quotable man since Oscar Wilde: “Finally, vegetables have a TV show of their own.”; “Every new US show these days is fun bollocks.”; “People of Britain! Why so sad? You have at least four different flavours of mulch to choose from.”; “I am phenomenally stupid. Stupid in every conceivable way except one: I’m dimly aware that I’m stupid.”
Most of Brooker’s humour is inspired by bad TV, but I love that he has a good go at the pernicious and all-pervasive frivolity in the world of make-believe: “Last week Mariah Carey turned on the Christmas lights at the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. That might sound like a trivial event of interest only to cretins, but remember: hundreds of thousands of brave men and women died in combat so the current generation could enjoy such freedoms.”
Like Brooker says, only a pr*** wouldn’t buy this book.
R.H.