Charlie Brooker

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Charlie Brooker interviewed by Marina Hyde

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Charlie Brooker exclusive!
Charlie Brooker was the funniest man in print journalism and now he's the funniest man on TV. To mark the reprint of his brilliant TV Go Home, he talks to GQ about feeling sorry for Lindsay Lohan, dealing with media intrusion and the surreal genius of Touch The Truck.
James Mullinger
gq-magazine.co.uk

GQ: Now you are something of a celebrity in your own right, did you have any doubts about re-releasing TV Go Home?
Charlie Brooker: When [the book] mentions real people in it, it's seeing them as objects in a way you do when you complain about people on television: "I fucking hate so and so". You are not thinking about them as real people. It's written from a slightly different perspective. More to the point, it's very puerile.

Do you find people misunderstand your work?
I probably don't help it myself, to be honest. People think I am an automatic cynicism machine, that I hate everything. But I only have myself to blame for that. Generally speaking, I like to think I'm sort of on the side of the underdog. People's attitudes to female celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, referring to her as a slut, a skank and a whore. What's wrong with us? When Britney was shaving her hair off, people were rubbing their hands with glee at this troubled young women. People miss the point. They see what I do sometimes and assume that that is the whole of what I do: being nasty about people. I'm over-intellectualising what is essentially a book of rude TV listings.

How prophetic it has proven? TV has since spawned far more absurd shows.
Touch The Truck on Channel Five. I thought, "That is such a TV Go Home idea - what's the point in me continuing?" It will be intriguing to see what people who hadn't read the book before think. It probably won't seem that strange because the surreal listings won't even work any more, because they just read like the things that are actually on. I wasn't hoping TV would get weirder. I just did it because it amused me that this would never happen.

Which shows in particular from TV Go Home can you imagine on now?
Mick Hucknall pushes his testicles against a glass wall. I can imagine that on Channel 4 if you had a doctor on the other side of it. If Dr Christian Jensen was there, Hucknall could be parting his cheeks and showing you his ruptured anus. On primetime.

Is there anything you can think of that would never happen?
I was looking at programmes from the Nineties and it was worse then. It was tawdry and it was a lot worse than it is now. Naked Elvis, for example: a man dressed as Elvis would take all his clothes off, and that's it. Lots of close-ups of his swinging penis. There was no rhyme or reason to it and I just don't think you'd get that today. People wouldn't stand for it. It was a weird period in the mid-Nineties when it was funny just to show a cock and balls on TV. We've kind of blanked it all from our memories.

Wow, Charlie Brooker says TV is not as bad as it used to be, that's an exclusive.
Well, in a way you could argue that it's blander and that things are slightly less inhibited. It's weird what has happened with TV. There's more good TV than ever but more rubbish as well. It's a curious thing.

You are a natural comedian. Any temptation to try stand-up?
Yes, when I was younger. I was talking to someone the other day about how if you did a Screenwipe show live, how you would do it. All I've ever wanted to do was write funny stuff. First of all I wanted to be a cartoonist, I did that for a while - I wasn't very good because I couldn't do speech bubbles. My purpose of doing TV Go Home was because I wanted to do something funny. I didn't desire to critique television, just to be funny. Then I got offered the Guardian column and people branded me a TV critic. I can reveal that I am finishing the column in December but will continue to write for the Guardian Guide.

How do you feel about having fans now? Is it hard for you to comprehend?
I'm not a performer but I do enjoy the showing off. I simply don't go out very much so I'm not really exposed to people coming up and talking to me. If I go somewhere like the Edinburgh festival, because you've got comedy fans hanging around the fringe and often drinking, people feel they can come up to me because they think they know my personality. Unlike, say, an actor.

Which persona is the real you?
Newswipe and Screenwipe, when I am very deadpan, that's obviously a highly edited and packaged show and I use an exaggeratedly cynical persona. You've Been Watching is more mainstream so I am more myself. I don't really have a consistent sense of self.

On Wikipedia it says: "His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism."
That sounds about right. That's fair.

Everything you have done has been well-received. Surely this live show you are doing next year will be your big fall?
I am working on a BBC2 show at the moment so that's what preoccupying me now. For the live Channel 4 show I don't know what my involvement will be. I was shitting myself on the night we did the election coverage but at the end I thought, "I wish I'd done more live stuff." It was a bit like what I imagine a skydive to be like.

Jimmy Carr is an amazing stand-up and has ten years of experience so how do you, with no live background, stand alongside him and keep up?
I am always slightly in awe of the proper performers who can get up in front of an audience and just effortlessly entertain people. Whenever I do panel shows, I sit there not knowing who I am and I have an existential crisis. My contributions will probably be packages but I don't know what those are yet.

Do you enjoy the success?
The weird thing for me now is that I know what I'm doing for all of 2011. I'm from the generation that thought the world would be exterminated in a nuclear holocaust so couldn't even conceive the future. I am not a good planner. I just say I want to do everything because it could all end tomorrow but then I don't always have time to do everything.

Has the extra success led to more press intrusion into your private life?
We're not the sort of people to pose on red carpets. We walked out of the house the other day and there were some paps trying to get a photo of Konnie's ring and my initial reaction was to give them the finger and shout fuck off, which is actually probably counterproductive. If you do a magazine deal and say, "Come and have a look around my lovely home" - which they wouldn't, by the way, I live in a fucking shithole - but if you do that then you are opening a whole can of worms, so I am cagey about discussing the whole set-up. It's nobody's business. It would drive me mad. It's bad enough when you are trying to have a piss and someone is staring at the end of your penis without having the press delving into your marriage.

Read more from Charlie Brooker in the December issue of GQ. Charlie Brooker's TV Go Home is out now (£12.99, Faber).

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Charlie Brooker on the Steve Wright Show - 2010-11-05

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