Product Description

One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. Yet again the public gorges its voyeuristic appetite as another group of unknown and unremarkable people submit themselves to the brutal exposure of the televised real-life soap opera, House Arrest. Everybody knows the rules: total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. Who will crack first? Who will have sex with whom? Who will the public love and who will they hate? All the usual questions. And then, suddenly, there are some new ones. Who is the murderer? How did he or she manage to kill under the constant gaze of the thirty television cameras? Why did they do it? And who will be next?

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20289 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ben Elton's Dead Famous brings together his talents in comedy and crime writing to produce a hilarious and devastating novel on the gruesome world of reality TV. Peeping Tom productions invent the perfect TV programme: House Arrest. Its slogan is: "One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. One survivor." This is all a clever parody of the massive TV hit Big Brother, with its vain, ambitious contestants with their:

tattoos and their nipple rings, their mutual interest in star signs, their endless hugging and touching, and above all their complete lack of genuine intellectual curiosity about one single thing on this planet that was not directly connected with themselves.

However, Elton adds a clever twist to this very funny send-up. On Day 27 of the programme, one of the housemates is killed live on TV. Everyone in the country has a theory about the killer, "indeed the only person who seemed to have absolutely no idea whatsoever of the killer's identity was Inspector Stanley Spencer Coleridge, the police officer in charge of the investigation". Coleridge is an old fogey from the 1950s, who has to learn quickly about lesbians, piercings, blow jobs and the seductions of TV fame before he can crack the case. Elton's wicked parody of the housemates is brilliant, the murder fiendish in its ingenuity, and the ending wonderfully over the top. Dead Famous is great fun, and even has some social comment thrown in for good measure. --Jerry Brotton

From the Publisher
The new killer read from the author of Popcorn and Inconceivable

From the Back Cover
One house, ten contestants, thirty cameras, forty microphones, one murder.and no evidence.

Dead Famous is a killer read from Ben Elton - Reality TV as you've never seen it before.

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Customer Reviews

Satirical, witty, and murderous fun. Ben does it again.
One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. I bought this book, just to find out how the hell someone could get murdered in the "House Arrest" house, without anyone knowing about it.

When you peel away the wrappings, this book is a classic whodunnit. Ten people are in a house, and one of them is dead. One of the survivors must be the killer. But who is it, what's the motive, and why oh why wasn't it Woggle who was killed?

But whatever you do, don't simply peel away the wrappings. This is book is more than that. Ben Elton has stripped down the "Big Brother" phenomenon, and given it his treatement. The result is a satrical look at the whole state of affairs, through the eyes of those who love, hate, or take part in it.

This book is not just for "Big Brother" fans, detractors will be able to sympathise with Chief Inspector Coleridge, but it would help if you are at least familiar with it.

An interesting twist on a Big Brother style story
Although I've never been a particular fan of Ben Elton I am a fan of comedy novels, whodunnits and reality T.V. and so I decided to give this book a go.

For the first half of the book I couldn't help but think that this was just a rip off of Big Brother and anyone who was an avid viewer of either of the UK series' will notice many similarities between the characters in the book and the housemates and even a couple of the things that happened in the book brought to mind things that had happened in the show. In fact, Ben Elton even says at the front of this book that it could not have been written without Andrew, Anna, Craig etc and Amma, Brian, Bubble etc.

By the time I reached the second half of the book though I was enthralled and I couldn't put it down. I really wanted to know who had done it and how it had been done. I certainly didn't expect the person who had done it to be the murderer.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick easy read. I'd have finished the book in one sitting if I hadn't had to go to work but as it was I still managed to finish it in a little over a day.

Big Bruv is watching...
I was a little reluctant at first to read this, as the 'Big Brother' frenzy has been overdone, but I bought this to take on holiday and really enjoyed it. The characters are very colourful and individual with some very bizarre personalities, but its one of those books where we all know someone like one of the characters, and the next time you meet them, you will remember the book and grin.

It is quite easy to read, and the formula is that of a good old fashioned who-done-it set in a Big Brother style reality TV show, that kept me guessing until the very end, in fact I think at some point i was SURE of each and every one of the housemates guilt.

The ending is particularly good and the 'twist' is funny and unexpected. A good read.