Guardian Angels

It perhaps says more about me that I have formed huge attachment on several writers on the Guardian newspaper. It started with Laura Barton, a writer who seems to share all of my main opinions and tastes and can express them in a way that's so undeniably passionate that it makes me want to proclaim her my dream woman.

I feel the same way about Marina Hyde, the columnist behind the weekly Lost In Showbiz column and Charlie Brooker (although he at least doesn't conjure up the dream woman analogy quite as well). So much so, the last two books that I've read have been written by both of these two writers. The books in question are Marina's "Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy" and Charlie Brooker's "Dawn Of The Dumb".

Hyde is best known for her Lost In Showbiz pieces, where her deeply satirical, whimsical and consistently hilarious pieces are published in Friday's G2 supplement. I was delighted to hear a few months ago that she was releasing a full length book based on these pieces but studying them in more detail. My copy was not sat on the shelf for very long before I devoured it in a few short bursts.

Stylistically, Celebrity is a mixed bag. One thing instantly sticks out as troublesome, whereby a lot of her jokes are stuck in footnotes* which takes a little getting used to. This device is used on most pages and although some of the jokes gain a little from the "Reveal" of having to go down to the bottom of the page to reach the punch line, it ultimately disrupts the rhythm and flow of the writing. You do get used to it as the book goes on but it does leave a lasting impression that it could’ve been handled in a more reader friendly way.

Another thing that becomes clear with the book is that there isn't quite enough material to spread it out over a full length piece of work. For the first half this isn't as much of a problem but as the book progresses, it tends to get a little stuck with the same cast of celebrity characters and similar stories.

That said, when it hits the mark it really obliterates its targets with Hyde's trademark wit. This book contains some of her best work when you boil it down to its smaller chapters and segments and perhaps that's the biggest problem.

When it comes down to it, the more successful of the two books was Brookers - which wasn't really a book as much as a chronological publishing of the already published columns in the Guardian from the past few years. In doing so, a lot of the writing was very much of its own time; for example lots of the pieces were about television shows happening at that time, like X Factor and Big Brother and this doesn't translate that well when these events have passed and the people involved in them are forgotten.

The reason why Dawn of the Dumb works better is purely its brevity and mainly because it hasn't been edited to try and become something other than a collection of newspaper articles already published.

Marina Hyde should be applauded for taking a subject that she's written about with great success and trying to craft a piece of work that's different in style and nuances, but expanding on all the main themes. It is a proper book rather than just a cynical attempt to move into the more lucrative paperback market.

Celebrity is still worth reading, make no mistake. Hyde's writing is perhaps the most engagingly funny and brilliantly satirical that I've ever read. But, as a style and a form, there's a reason why it was much more successful in short, sharp weekly newspaper articles.

* I'm not funny enough to do these as well as Marina.