Product Description

They didn't know what they were joining...they didn't know why they were joining it...but joining they were. Danny Wallace was bored. Just to see what would happen, he placed a whimsical small ad in a local London paper. It said, simply, "Join Me". Within a month he was receiving letters and emails from intrigued strangers all over the country, eager to sign up. Teachers, mechanics, sales reps, vicars, schoolchildren, pensioners - all pledged allegiance to his cause. None knew what his cause was. Soon he was proclaimed Leader. Increasingly obsessed and possibly power-crazed, he risked losing his sanity and his loyal girlfriend. But who could deny the attraction of a global following of devoted joinees? A modern-day Pied Piper, he travelled the world. From Inverness to Amsterdam, Swindon to Singapore, Paris, Zurich, Crete and Oslo. He became a minor celebrity in Belgium. He had a brush with a criminal mastermind in Devon. He made hundreds of old men all over the world very happy. A book about dreams, ambition and the responsibility that comes with power, this is the true story of a man who created a cult by accident and is proof that while some men were born to lead, others really haven't got a clue.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127737 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
How could you refuse the polite invitation of begoggled Danny Wallace in Join Me? You don't know what you could be missing out on. It's all about living for the moment in this quirky, seemingly pointless yet addictive narrative. Finding himself with too much time on his hands after quitting his BBC job, Danny revels in "sitting around in his pants" and generally taking a break from the responsibilities of working life. Danny attends the funeral of his great uncle Gallus and finds out that he had set up a commune of like-minded people to escape Swiss small town small-mindedness in the 1940s. Intrigued by this idea, on his return to London Danny places a cryptic advert in the classified ads paper Loot and gets some surprising results.

His Norwegian radio-producer girlfriend Hanne is bemused and infuriated that this has become more than a transient interest; it takes over his life--and hers. The number of "joinees"--people replying to his ad--escalates as word gets out about this new "happy cult", but without a clue about what he wants to achieve, or do with all his newfound friends, Danny has to think fast as dissent rises in the ranks. Now the reluctant leader of a troop of random hopefuls, he maintains their interest with obscure e-mails and watches as his joinees meet and bond.

Whatever he had created, it was bigger than he had anticipated. From an initially puerile idea, it had grown into something of a social experiment--why were people willing to take the risk? What was lacking in their lives that they thought they might get out of contacting a stranger? Taking risks, no matter how big or small, is the essential crux of the matter here and of course, nothing ventured, nothing gained. --Angela Boodoo

Nicholas Barber, Independent on Sunday
Danny Wallace does things few people would and writes about them in ways that few people could. He’s as funny as Bill Bryson used to be.

Stephen Torsi, The Bookseller
"brilliant"

Customer Reviews

Murder: Let's nip it in the bud!
It appears I have actually been living in a cave, because the oddly successful Join Me campaign passed me by entirely in 2002 (and onwards). And also, I did read Are You Dave Gorman before this. That book was pointless, yet life-affirming - and it had something important to say about friendship, and being nice to people. Nothing you could quite pin down, though.

Danny Wallace's first solo book, detailing his quest to get 1000 people to "Join him", is hilarious. Like Are You Dave Gorman, it's occasionally a little convenient and hard-to-believe at best. But life imitates art, and strange things really do happen.

Also, unlike said novel, Join Me has a definite message, and Danny's collective isn't a "bored man's experiment" at all. It merely started as one. It's basically a religion, minus all the trappings of sermons and scripture, with just a single aim: make people happy by being nice to them. It's starkly simple stuff, and the sense throughout the novel that Danny truly doesn't see the scale of what he's done is rather humbling. Hundreds join him out of sheer curiosity and trust. Hundreds do good deeds, finally feeling they have the excuse and right to. After reading this, you'll be truly hard-pressed not to sign up.

If anything, the book makes the human race seem a warmer, more lovable breed than before. An absolutely touching, sweet (and more importantly), funny story.

Join. No, buy the book first, no - join first, no...
Join Me is testament to how a crazy idea can bring people together for the good of others. It proves undeniably that the majority of people wish to help each other and sometimes they just need the smallest of excuses to do it. With a cast of odd characters the story goes from a silly idea by an exceptionally bored man to the whole scheme going wildy out of control to the heady heights of appearing on Belgium's top-rated TV show. This is most certainly a book with it's heart in the right place. Every joinee has learnt from the experience. Whether it's that a small, random act of kindness can have a big effect on the recipient, that strangers truly are friends we've not yet met, or perhaps just that it's not a good idea to look at pictures of peoples flats on the internet - and then mention it in casual conversation. Did I mention that the book is very funny? -- and by the way... It's not a cult, it's a collective. Only 2% of the vote? Damn.

Very Very Funny
This book is simply fantastic.
Having been Dave Gorman's ignored voice of reason in Are you Dave Gorman? Danny Wallace (not the one who used to play for Southampton and Man Utd) shows he too has the gift of being able to complete a daft undertaking and then recount his tale in a charming, easy to read and thoroughly amusing style.
Just like AYDG? you end up willing a total stranger to suceed at a task so marvelously pointless that even at your drunkest you'd never do it yourself.
The only problem is he writes so well someone's bound to try to get him to do a novel and stop him doing something much more entertaining instead.