"The Greater Honking Hooray”

With the OTT Book now on sale, what better time to take a look at some other wonderful telly-related books from the ages? We’ll be posting one (or two) page (or pages) from a different book each and every day until we forget to, we’ve covered all the TV-tie-in books in our collection, or our computer explodes from all the people tweeting about The Apprentice whenever it’s on. Place your bets.

As pretty much all the books in question have long since been deleted by their publishers, there shouldn’t be any legal difficulty there, we hope. Unlike all those superinjunctions that we've blown wide open on our Second Life profile page which luckily no-one has noticed yet for some reason. In any case, we’re putting these scans online under the banner of ‘BrokenTV’, and no-one else. Just in case anyone starts waving their lawyers around.

Today, we’ve got a page from Carrott Roots …and Other Myths (by Jasper Carrott, Arrow Books 1986). We’ve probably said this a few times before, but it’s a real shame that Jasp isn’t recognised for the comedy great he actually is. Not only was he one of the few big stand-up acts of the 1970s to avoid the whole sexism-racism thing, not to mention An Audience With Jasper Carrott having aged tremendously well (even down to the retrotastic Adidas cagoule he dons in the pre-credits talking head scene in episode 1, an exact replica of which Ian Brown probably wears today). Yet, when when he won the lifetime achievement gong at the British Comedy Awards a few years back, the reaction of the audience was so muted we felt like punching the entire British comedy industry up the coke-chute. Is ruthlessly mocking the Protect And Survive booklet on BBC-1 at the height of nuclear paranoia not enough for these people?

Anyway, here’s a page where Jasper Carrott pulls some funny faces.

A page (or two) from a different book tomorrow. Until then, why not take time to have a look at the TV-related book that all the steampunks are referring to as OTTTBBOTBTVWNNNTTAN (Off The Telly: The Best Bits of the British TV Website 1999-2009)? Available from Lulu.com in paperback for just £16.99 (that's just £0.00005 per word!), or £3.99 for the PDF ebook version, with any profits going to Alzheimer's charities.

Go on, what else are you going to spend your money on? Heating?