"...Team Of Irish Scientists Find "The Clitoris"..." And Other Ball-Breaking Stories!
I’ll openly admit to being biased on this book, as one of the three writers is my younger brother Damien.
Like the British, Irish people have a blinding sense of humour and a healthy knack of taking the piss out of country’s respective lunacies. Set up in Ireland for fun in 1997, Blather.net is an Internet site that does exactly that – it features ballbreakingly funny articles about varying things that get on the tits of Irish people. The Irish Press quickly picked up on it of course – producing several of the better stories – and it snowballed from there. The 140 pages of this book feature 29 of their best posts.
If you find that titles like "Unidentified Feckin' Objects", "Most Of The Internet Is About Bobby Darin" and "Irishwoman Deafened By Ticking Of Her Own Biological Clock" already have you giggling, then you get the general idea. My personal favourites are "IRA Announces Massive Redundancies" in which the Peace Process and market forces (influx of Euro terrorists who’ll do the job cheaper) have left the boys proclaiming, "...we simply can't compete". I almost wet my Shamrock-shaped Y-fronts at "Clontarf-Based Science Team Find "The Clitoris"..." which was (we’re reliably informed) located in the back of a Fiat Punto on Dollymount Beach in Dublin.
What's great of course about so many of these life vignettes is the delicious irreverence of them – especially in the face of so much po-faced political correctness nowadays. You can’t help but feel that the world desperately needs a laugh like this.
If I was to bring up a downside, it's that the posts often came with equally funny visuals and none are reproduced here – hopefully they’ll get that rectified with the next print run.
Irreverent, clever, insightful and very funny – you should treat yourself to this book. In truth, I found myself with it in Soho Square on Kirsty MacColl’s commemorative bench giggling like a loon at lunchtime. And when a very nice lady from Toronto couldn’t resist anymore and asked me what I was chortling at, I had to tell her the awful truth. I’ve a younger brother who’s funnier and smarter than I am.
Fecker!
