READ THIS BOOK! - Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker is a genius.

The greatest misanthrope of our time (at least in Britain), he writes a column in the Media Guardian called Screen Burn where he basically tears into a multitude of awful British TV shows every week, ripping them to shreds with an inventive razor-sharp wit and a talent for absurd, surreal wordplay that frankly makes me weep with envy.

This book, and it's predecessor the appropriately titled 'Screen Burn', is a collection of the Guardian columns going back to roughly 2005 through to late 2007. Now, you CAN find these columns on the Guardian website (at the above link) and thereby forgoe any need to purchase this or 'Screen Burn' but I urge you not to take that route for two very simple reasons.

1) I got both of them from HMV for £3 a piece - which isn't so much a bargain as an obscene giveaway given we're talking 300 pages of highly amusing commentary.

2) Well, I don't need a second because the first one was so great. Neh.

In getting this book, you'll find diatribes against the vacuousness of Big Brother (and any celebrity who wants to get me out of being a millionare on love island reality bollocks), how annoying David Cameron, the insanity yet addictiveness of 24. It's all there. He leaves very little untouched and much of it is all comedy gold.

I can't quite fellate Brooker on everything mind. His chronic hate for football and the World Cup is one I don't share and disagree with, nor do I feel 24 went quite as crap as he did (though many would agree). However, mostly he's spot on and the older I get, the more of a curmudgeon I get, and I find myself aligning increasingly with Brooker's view - however obviously exaserbated for the purposes of humour.

Buy it, basically. Or if you're a tight bastard, read the column archive. Either will do.