Charlie Brooker - The Hell of it All

Charlie Brooker

The Hell of it All

CONTENTS In which nightclubs are derided, spiders are feared, and the vast majority of people inexplicably fail to blow their own heads off In which lies are told by everyone except Simon Cowell, Jamie Oliver cooks tomatoes, and the 24-hour news networks look for Madeleine McCann In which David Cameron loses weight, neighbours fight for their right to party, and someone from Five appears In which Cerys Matthews romances a baby, Peter Andre and Jordan cause bafflement, and total sensory deprivation is attempted In which George Clooney becomes a coffee ambassador, all-out war is declared on reality, and Lulu has a wonderful dream In which young men are the enemy, Michael Portillo hosts a warthog parade, and the Iraq war becomes a set of dizzying numbers In which celebrities perish, Valentine's Day fails to raise hopes, and smokers are threatened with paperwork In which The Apprentice provokes confusion, the Gladiators change their names by deed poll, and a TV show baits real-life paedophiles for chuckles In which the idiots start winning, Boris runs for mayor, and the sexual habits of various animals are contemplated In which ethnicity is admired for the sake of it, Christianity is misrepresented, and Dale Winton threatens to bring on the wall In which deadly marketing strategies are brainstormed, conspiracy t heorists grow upset for the 85th time, and Britney Spears is depicted naked In which the world as we know it comes to an end, Kerry Katona is defended, and the Daily Mail pretends to be outraged by Russell Brand and a butterfly . In which Sachsgate rumbles on, Bagpuss goes to sleep, and MTV introduce the most vapid TV show in history In which Barack Obama is elected, Santa dies, and Tatler prints an exhaustive list of the biggest cunts in Britain In which Noel Edmonds rants down a lens, Knight Rider makes an ill-advised comeback, and Greece Has Talent In which MPs provoke fury, potato crisps appear in appalling new flavours, and the British National Party offends anyone with a basic grasp of human decency and/or graphic design .

Hello, reader, and welcome to another collection of scrawled gibberish, scraped from the pages of the Guardian and fashioned into the unassuming paper brick you currently hold in your hands. I hope you enjoy the majority of what you're about to absorb. If not, well, sorry. Use the book for something else. Like security: you could probably club a burglar unconscious with it, if you swing it forcefully enough and angle the spine just right, so it connects with the bridge of their nose. Or just rip it up, make a papier-mache shield out of it, and go fight dragons. It's your book. Go crazy.

Just like my previous anthology, Dawn of the Dumb , the columns here are assembled into chapters, alternating between Screen Burn TV review columns written for the Guardian Guide and more wide-ranging (some might say random) pieces tackling any subject under the sun, scribbled for the Guardian's G2 section. The contents are rather arbitrarily presented in chronological order, although you can read the individual articles in any order you like. Like I said earlier, it's your book. Honestly. You own this.

Eagle-eyed readers may spot the occasional word or turn of phrase that didn't appear in print. That's because I've gone back and dug out the 'uncensored' versions of a few of the columns, where it was possible to do so. In a couple of other places I've simply rewritten something slightly to amuse myself. Usually, I've made things more childish. God I hate me.

Thanks are due to many people for their help and assistance in getting this all together: Julian Loose, Liz May Brice, Annabel Jones, Lisa Darnell and Lucinda Chua. Also Malik Meer and Kathy Sweeney at the Guide , and Emily Wilson and Mike Herd at G2. The largest, belated thanks are due to Tim Lusher at the Guardian , who gave me my first real 'break' with the paper. Apologies to anyone I've missed out. I'm forgetful, not to mention an absolute shit.

Anyway, stop reading this now and go enjoy your book. YOUR BOOK .

In which nightclubs are derided, spiders are feared, and the vast majority of people inexplicably fail to blow their own heads off

The hell of nightclubs [13 August 2007]

I went to a fashionable London nightclub on Saturday. Not the sort of sentence I get to write very often, because I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy eating wool. But a glamorous friend of mine was there to 'do a PA', and she'd invited me and some curious friends along because we wanted to see precisely what 'doing a PA' consists of. Turns out doing a public appearance largely entails sitting around drinking free champagne and generally just 'being here'.

Obviously, at 36, I was more than a decade older than almost everyone else, and subsequently may as well have been smeared head to toe with pus. People regarded me with a combination of pity and disgust. To complete the circuit, I spent the night wearing the expression of a man waking up to Christmas in a prison cell.

'I'm too old to enjoy this,' I thought. And then remembered I've always felt this way about clubs. And I mean all clubs - from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don't have to pretend any more.

I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only 'saddoes' dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled 'sad' - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.

Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.

Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they 'enjoy' clubbing. They don't. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.

Drugs render location meaningless. Neck enough ketamine and you could have the best night of your life squatting in a shed rolling corks across the floor. And no one's going to search you on the way in. Why bother with clubs?

'Because you might get a shag,' is the usual response. Really? If that's the only way you can find a partner - preening and jigging about like a desperate animal - you shouldn't be attempting to breed in the first place. What's your next trick? Inventing fire? People like you are going to spin civilisation into reverse. You're a moron, and so is that haircut you're trying to impress. Any offspring you eventually blast out should be drowned in a pan before they can do any harm. Or open any more nightclubs.

Even if you somehow avoid reproducing, isn't it a lot of hard work for very little reward? Seven hours hopping about in a hellish, reverberating bunker in exchange for sharing 64 febrile, panting pelvic thrusts with someone who'll snore and dribble into your pillow till 11 o'clock in the morning, before waking up beside you with their hair in a mess, blinking like a dizzy cat and smelling vaguely like a ham baguette? Really, why bother? Why not just stay at home punching yourself in the face? Invite a few friends round and make a night of it. It'll be more fun than a club.

Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things struck me. Firstly, everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgement of others, trapped within a self-perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I'd still secretly like to be them, of course, but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I've progressed that far.

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