Bog Book Bonanza

"When I was young and aspirational, one of the things I always dreamed of was having a bookshelf in my lav" - review of Ardal O'Hanlon's The Talk Of The Town, July 1998

And four and a half years after I wrote that, I can't deny that it's still an aspiration. Mainly because bookshelf space of mine that could be occupied with real literature is currently the home of all manner of shitty comedy and TV spin-off books, whose natural fate is to be skimmed over by readers looking to take their minds off the crap they're currently having. Christmas is always the worst time, of course, as that's when these books come out by the skipload: and I end up with more every year, either as presents or as impulse buys made while shopping for presents.

With this in mind, I initially planned to write this piece back in early 2002, with the hope that I could topically skewer the books published for the Christmas 2001 market. Pressure of work, however, meant that I never got around to it. One year on, it's slightly creepy to discover that an equivalent article on the bog books published for Christmas 2002 isn't all that different from the one for Christmas 2001.

Part of that duplication is, of course, down to certain books coming out every year. In the same way that British kids looked forward to the Beano and Dandy annuals every Christmas (and maybe even still do), the more grown-up kids can rely on the adult periodicals to produce their own yearly collections. The closest thing you'll get to those childhood favourites is inevitably Viz: The Bag Of Slugs (Simon Donald et al, IFG, £9.99), the umpteenth collection of strips and articles from the magazine. Fifteen years on from its artistic peak, there's no denying that Viz has gone downhill: these days it's so full of sex chatline adverts that it's almost porno in its own right. And there are nineteen contributors listed in the credits at the front, a testament to us being a long way from the days when four mates with instantly recognisable drawing styles threw it together in the pub. But the formula still works, more or less. This book collects Viz issues 100 to 105, without any real clues as to when they were originally published: most of this stuff is pretty much timeless, apart from the occasional topical reader's letter. ("All this wank about the Millennium Bug. Britain spends £85 million, and the only thing that crashes is Q out of the Bond films.") The usual characters perform the usual variations on their schtick, but the best strips involve real-life people put into classic comic situations: Old Mother Theresa trying to stop lepers from stealing medicine, young Shane MacGowan bingeing on Curly Wurlys and Coca-Cola, or Captain Tom Smith travelling the galaxies in a rocket ship that's shaped like "Jeremy Spake's fucking face".

The Private Eye Annual 2002 (ed. Ian Hislop, Private Eye, £8.99) predictably has a bit more of a topical edge to it, but again holds no real surprises for any regular reader, least of all one who's got copies of the equivalent collections dating back to the early eighties. (I'm going to need a bigger bog, obviously.) As ever, the chronological structure means that it's a handy record of the big news stories of the last twelve months, filtered through the inevitable Eye formulae and in-jokes. Unfortunately, this means that the early part of the book is dedicated to their inadequate take on the events of September 2001 - as we'll see later on, any attempt at getting humour out of 9/11 requires incredible boldness, and this is one time when Hislop and his crew wimped out badly. Inevitably, things improve once the focus moves away from the event itself and concentrates on the media's coverage of it: by the end of the year covered in this volume, they'd recovered their nerve enough to take on the Soham child murders using precisely that approach. But once again, it's the usual collection of comforting old jokes, and probably utterly incomprehensible to anyone outside the UK.

To this list of annuals, a new one should be added. The Onion Ad Nauseam: Complete News Archives Volume 13 (ed Robert Siegel, Boxtree, £12.99) is, they claim, the first in a series of chronologically arranged collections of articles from the not-terribly-popular magazine and globally-renowned website. The Onion was never really been the sort of publication that thrived on topicality, but you can see why they're starting at October 2000 rather than going all the way back to its beginnings. For much of the book, we get all the favourite items we've read on the website but couldn't be bothered printing out and keeping: fabulously economical comedy headlines ("Make-A-Wish Foundation Criticized After Dying 14-Year-Old Crashes Jet"), opinionated columnists ("I'm Like A Chocoholic, But For Booze" says Ralph Chadwick), and handy tips for avoiding what the Yanks apparently call hoof and mouth disease ("boil all British beef until gray and flavorless, the way the British do"). But then September 11th happened, ironically just a couple of days after The Onion had moved into new editorial offices in New York. They went quiet for two weeks, and then hit back with some of the most magnificently judged satirical writing on the subject. The headlines were being emailed around the world for weeks afterwards: "US Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We're At War With", "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie", "Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American Flag Cake". Two particular highlights stood out: a special edition of the ParentCorner column (normally dedicated to preying humourously on the innocence of children, but this time summarising the crisis in the most beautifully simple terms possible), and the controlled fury of "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule". Future editions of Ad Nauseam may not hit these dizzy heights - in fact, we'd probably all rather hope events never came to that - but the books will be well worth waiting for, on this evidence.

As The Onion shows us, there is a time for cutting-edge satire: incisive, provocative writing that shows up the folly of our leaders through fearless analysis and moral rigour. But there are times when satire is inappropriate, and what you really need is a drawing of the President's wife drinking gin from the bottle and pissing in her knickers. And Tony And Me By Georg Bush (Dr Parsons, Scribner, £9.99) is happy to fulfil that need for you. James Parsons has been doing web animations for a while now, but his autobiography of George W Bush told as a badly-spelt, crayon-scrawled id-dump has gathered viral strength over the past year. In the expansion from a three-minute Shockwave short to a 96 page book, the focus has changed from a simple analysis of the Bush psyche to a look at the increasingly homoerotic relationship between him and his best friend Tony. ("tony put tenis bals up his shurt like a gurl. he did medesin on my willi. it was fizzli.") Subtlety isn't this book's strong point, and the more outrageously direct it gets, the better it is. In the section on Bush's enemy 'osarmer', a drawing of a desert village in flames is accompanied by the caption "puzzl! can you find the baddis hidin", and at the bottom of the page "i cant. we no where sadam is tho so we can bom him." And sometimes, that's all you need.

Websites like Parsons' are becoming fertile sources for the bog book, cleverly playing on most people's inability to maintain a stable internet connection while on the crapper. Unnovations (Charlie Brooker et al, Fourth Estate, £6.99) is the latest project from the people who brought you TV Go Home: a collection of adverts for useless and/or dangerous consumer items, drawn primarily from the fetid depths of Brooker's imagination. Unfortunately, it looks like the same trajectory's being followed here as with his earlier work: frequent updates of the website dropping off to a trickle, followed by a cash-in book that reprints the best of the web ideas, accompanied by a low-budget digital TV series that completely buggers up those ideas. Still, the inside of Brooker's head is always a bracing place to visit: so providing you don't mind paying seven quid for a tiny 64 page book, you can re-experience the delights of the Despair-Fueled Cycling Monkey (a colourful child's toy powered by the howling of a depressed mother), the KissMammal 2003 (a genetic combination of your DNA with a pig to produce your very own personalised sex partner) and BleakEat Easy-Slim Plates (crockery that helps you lose weight because it's covered with pictures of anal tumours that put you off your food). Maybe I misused the word 'delights' back there, but you get the idea.

You'll get better value for money from The Framley Examiner (Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris & Joel Morris, Penguin, £9.99), yet another collection of recycled web stuff. This one uses the tried and tested format of a local newspaper, which sneakily means that any cock-ups in the production process can be passed off as a joke on the low standards of provincial journalism. (Some of those faked cock-ups are surprisingly subtle, notably the way that every page contains a faint imprint of the non-existent page behind it.) The two Morrises in the list of authors are presumably no relation to scoundrel comedy god Chris Morris, but the writers are obviously big fans: there's the odd Morrisesque unexpected turn of phrase (a vandalised statue "depicts womankind as an orgasm-shaped baby holding a frying pan full of ironing"), and frequent obscure pop culture references (the statue's in Van Dyke Park). The news stories start well, but inevitably fizzle out once the central idea's been revealed: where the Examiner excels is in the one-line hit-and-run gag. In particular there's a fabulous collection of small ads, from lonely hearts ("Basque Separatist seeks sympathetic male for cuddles and mainland car bombings, possibly more") to items for sale ("Vague tape measure, marked 'Near' at one end and 'Far' at the other"). With a hundred or so items like that crammed on a page, it may not make for easy reading, but it's very browsable.

A fertile source for bog literature is whatever the hot TV property of the moment is: ever since the glory days of Monty Python's Big Red Book, the conversion from script to tatty paperback has long been associated with the festive season. When this article was first mooted twelve months ago, the property in question would have been Sacha Baron Cohen's Da Ali G Book. This year, it probably has to be Officially Osbourne (The Osbourne Family with Todd Gold, Simon & Schuster, £12.99), which is pretty much what you'd expect from an official spin-off book: an episode-by-episode recap of the best bits of The Osbournes, with lots of pictures and some new interviews. But for us Brits, there's a real problem here. Cunningly, the book is being sold shrinkwrapped, with a warning sticker promising offensive material. So it's not until you get the shrinkwrap off (after you've paid for it) that you realise that every single bit of swearing has been replaced by random punctuation marks, in the same way that the American broadcasts have bleeped out all the language. Over here in the Rest Of The Bloody World, we get The Osbournes uncut, but the book doesn't take that into account. We don't want a book that coyly tells us that Ozzy said "17 bad words" during episode 4: we want to know how many times he said 'cunt' when discussing Kelly's gynaecologist. The interviews are a nice bonus, but really you'd be better off with the shows themselves. (Portable DVD players are easily available for toilet use, and season one of the show has just been released uncut on DVD in the US, so it's not such an unreasonable suggestion.)

All the above books have one key thing in common - for the most part, they're designed rather than written, the graphics being an integral part of what makes them lightweight. But the other key type of toilet literature is the sort of dense-text reference-style book that can only be dipped into: any attempt to read them cover to cover would just result in brain seizure (and believe me, I've tried, I know). Two books released for Christmas 2002 fit this template, and it's interesting to note that they both sold exceptionally well. The first was Roger's Profanisaurus (Roger Mellie, Boxtree, £9.99), which of course is another product of the Viz publishing empire. As the cover points out, Viz has been flogging this idea to death for 35 dog years now: starting with a 24-page pamphlet providing detailed dictionary definitions for the most obscene slang terms imaginable, they've gathered enough contributions from their readers to expand it into a 256 page hardback. Of course, the joke is that many of the terms here don't really need defining, as shown by the huge number of entries that merely cross-reference other entries. (Thus spank the monkey is defined as "to bash the bishop, burp the worm".) But there are all manner of phrases in here that will undoubtedly increase your vocabulary, for better or worse. For me, the most useful terms are the various ones related to beer and drinking mishaps, such as beer monkey: "a mythical simian creature which, during a drunken slumber, sneaks into your bed, ruffles your hair, steals your money and shits in your mouth."

But the book that came out of nowhere to storm the 2002 bestseller charts - thus ensuring that lots of pisspoor imitations will be written in time for Christmas 2003 - was Schott's Original Miscellany (Ben Schott, Bloomsbury, £9.99). Although, cunningly, it's the design that played a large part in its success: laid out like a classic Victorian treasury of useless information (even though it was written in 2002), it was the perfect middle-class stocking filler. Schott's is completely impossible to read cover to cover, simply because there's no structure to the damn thing at all: opening it at a randomly-chosen two-page spread reveals a glossary of typographical terms, details of the paper A sizes, hints on how to get an airline upgrade, a summary of the Dewey classification system and a list of the emergency services which are allowed to use blue lights on their vehicles. After a while, when the novelty wears off, it all becomes fantastically tiring. But when a book's so deliberately designed to be dipped into, and more or less sneers in your face if you want to find a specific piece of data in it, you can't really take issue with it in the company of the other books reviewed here. Schott's Original Miscellany is the Bog Book Of 2002, simply because it makes no sense in any other context. But I will say this: if you rip out page 51 (which contains the phrase 'I love you' translated into 43 foreign languages) and staple it into a Valentine's Day card, it works.

So those were the gift books that cluttered up the bookstores in Christmas 2002, and you'll probably find that it'll be a very similar story when Christmas 2003 rolls around. And if you fancy installing them in your own toilet, why not buy them via this very site and make me a few pounds of commission? Put it this way: if you don't, I'll sneak into your bed, ruffle your hair, steal your money and shit in your mouth. Being a monkey, and all.

Links

Viz go on repeatedly about how useless their website is, but in fact it's accumulated some nice material over the years. Cartoon strips both past and present (for some reason, I have a particular fondness for Mickey's Monkey Spunk Moped), assorted downloadable games (including the Roger's Profanisaurus version of Hangman), and your own chance to contribute to the Profanisaurus itself. And it's nice to see that the editorial team is just as ashamed of those phone sex ads as the rest of us.

Private Eye, on the other hand, are probably secretly proud of how useless their website is. You get selected gags from the current issue, a few audio and visual highlights from their past (including their notorious coverage of Princess Di's death), and er... that's it.

The Onion has received glowing recommendations on these pages in the past, and now does so again. The site has classic old bits (including the Holy Fucking Shit Issue of September 2001), terrific arts coverage courtesy of The Onion AV Club, and even gives you the chance to find lurve via its personal ads.

The World of Dr Parsons phd is annoyingly Flash-heavy in parts, but animations like the Bush one which inspired the Tony And Me book are worth the download time.

Unnovations hasn't been updated since mid 2001. Sort it out, Brooker! In the meantime, you can look at the similarly moribund TV Go Home page, and other comedy products from Zeppotron.

The Framley Examiner - "cult internet hit but quite good", as the book describes it - is possibly the closest we've got yet to the mythical Good UK Version Of The Onion. Look at the latest pages, or see the old stuff that's been spunked away in the book. (Their personal ads are funnier than The Onion's, too.)

The Osbournes have their own microsite on MTV, as you'd imagine. There's an episode guide (with potential spoilers for non-American viewers, of course), info on the family and pets, and downloadable AV goodies for your PC. You can even Ask Ozzy to help solve your personal problems, if you don't think that's a completely fucking stupid thing to want to do.

Schott's Original Miscellany is a somewhat anaemic promo site for the book, hanging off Ben Schott's homepage. It has a few sample bits of trivia from the book, and the option to join a mailing list that'll send you new items once a month, when they eventually get around to setting it up.

The Monkey Mall, or more specifically its books section, has all of the above on sale. You've been warned.

March 1st 2003