Product Description

In THE AUDACITY OF HYPE, Armando Iannucci cuts straight to the heart of the insanity and sherbet-headed nonsense of modern life. THE AUDACITY OF HYPE brings together his views on diverse subjects, ranging from wickedly funny pen portraits of the sometimes loveable, usually despicable chumps who like to think of themselves as our political elite, and their bonkers schemes to save the world that are in fact likely to do us more harm than a pile of witches, to WMD, disaster movies, the pitfalls of 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here' and the high and mighty rhetoric of Obama, this is an absurdly entertaining and utterly indispensable collection from one of Britain's most brilliant satirists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #438 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
`A genuinely hilarious non-stop crack-up-fest that only the comatose and the dead won't enjoy' DAZED & CONFUSED --DAZED & CONFUSED

`It's a tempestuous collection of philosophical musings and rants... Less of a toilet book than a lavatorial bible' WORD --WORD

`When he's good, he's great . . . There are many a mirthful, misanthropic moment' LONDON LITE --LONDON LITE

`The fuzzy politics and daily corruption of modern life are thrown into unsparing focus' MAIL ON SUNDAY
--MAIL ON SUNDAY MAIL ON SUNDAY

About the Author
One of Britain's most celebrated comedy writers and producers, Armando Iannucci is a creator of The Day Today, Alan Partridge, The Saturday Night Armistice and The Thick of It. He has produced many TV and radio programmes, including On the Hour and The Mary Whitehouse Experience.

Customer Reviews

A nice little read, but lacking the spark of "Facts and Fancies"
I love Armando Iannucci. There's not a single thing this man has been involved in that I've not enjoyed on some level. He's a genius, yet he doesn't seem aware of it, which makes him quite an endearing character.

His 1st book, "Facts and Fancies", is one of my "go to" books when I've exhausted all unread books, and want something I know will deliver. To say I was excited about this book would be an understatement.

And it IS a good book. Whereas F&F was a chapter-chapter-chapter affair, this is very much a brain dump - some "bits" are 3 or 4 lines, some several pages long. Some of it is genius, some just misses the mark (for me). F&F latched onto absurd premises, took it and ran it until the original idea seemed plausible (such as the mathematical formula for nursery rhymes), whereas this book doesn't let each idea flourish in the same way. Which is a shame, but then perhaps they wouldn't work the same way had Iannucci expanded the concepts and taken a flight of fancy with them. Also, in fairness to Iannucci - he's already written that book, and this is a different book, meaning that just doing the same thing again probably wasn't the spark of what he wanted to achieve.

But it IS a good book. The above paragraph sounds so negative, but it really is a good book. If you appreciate Iannucci's more surreal works (his show for example), you'll definitely enjoy this, and annoy the heck out of whoever is sat nearby with chuckles of delight.

Audaciously brilliant genius! Do not hesitate to buy and read...
Whether you are already a fan of Armando's stunning TV portfolio - The Day Today, Brass Eye, Time Trumpet, The Thick of It - or coming to him anew, you should get a real kick out of this collection of his columns from the Daily Telegraph and Observer. I had missed them completely, so this supercolumnpendium was a great read (my pathetic attempt at an Iannucci-ism).

With consummate skill, joy and despair, he brilliantly satirises the everyday absurdities of modern life. From 'and' being declared the most important syllable of the 20th century to the popularity of reality TV shows, the manipulation of fact and increasingly language by the modern politician, and the war in Irag, Armando Iannucci rages at the modern world, frequently straddling the ever greying border between fact and fiction, leaving you bemused, confused and bent double with laughter. His pleasure in the creation of new and unusual insults is a joy to share.

Make sure you update your vocabulary with his dictionary of modern usage, for example, 'nanopology': a newspaper retraction less than one-sixteenth the size of the original story.

Excellent.

Good, but not his best work
If you like the Armando Iannucci shows or his appearences on the 99p challenge then think more of that kind of thing for the contens of this book.
Much of it is a collection of work previously published in the Telegraph or Observer and it consists of some small, some slightly longer flights of fancy. If you read it in Armandos voice and delivery style then it'll work, you need to put that effort in to get the right feeling in your head but it's worth it. So, very much for Iannucci fans but suffers from not having the delivery of the man himself.