Charlie Brooker

Profile: Timeline view Full name: Charlie Brooker Area of interest: Satire and comedy Journals/Organisation: The Guardian Email: charlie.brooker@zeppotron.com Personal website: Website: Guardian.co / Charlie Brooker Blog: Representation: Conville and Walsh Networks: http://twitter.com/#!/search/charltonbrooker | http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charlie-Brooker/6828532654

Biography: About: Education: University of Westminster, 1989/1992, BA in Media Studies (Television and Video Production) Career: Oink!: writer/cartoonist; PC Zone: comic strip/column; Channel 4's The Eleven O'Clock Show: co-writer; Zeppotron comedy content production company: co-founder and creative director; Channel 4's Nathan Barley sitcom: co-writer; Channel 4's Spoons sketch show: co-writer; BBC4: Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe The Guardian: The Guide - Screen Burn column; The Guardian G2 Friday column ('Supposing'), 2005/2006, replaced by a Monday column, October 2006-present Current position/role: Columnist also writes/has written for: Other roles/Main role: Other activities: Comedy writer, creative director at Zeppotron production company, part of Endemol Viewpoints/Insight: Charlie Brooker: Mr Angry’s sexy side, He rants, he raves, and he moans. But with two new shows on television it seems we cannot get enough of his caustic wit. Interview with Camilla Long, Sunday Times, 23rd January 2011 Broadcast media: Black Mirror (TV series) Video: Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: 8 Out of 10 Cats: FAQ U: Nathan Barley: Space Cadets: Spoons: Unnovations; Would I Lie To You?: Google playlist: Newswipe: site IMDb Controversy/Criticism: Writer on Channel 4's controversial spoof documentary Brass Eye special on the subject of paedophilia, 2001 A column discussing the US Presidential elections and George W. Bush had to be withdrawn, with an apology from the columnist, after apparently being considered as an incitement to murder the President. See: Paper sorry for 'kill Bush' line BBC News, 25 October 2004 and Brooker gets fingers burnt, BBC Comedy Blog, 25th October 2004 Awards/Honours: Columnist of the year, British Press Awards 2009 Scoops: Other:

Books & Debate: TV Go Home OCLC47232207 ,with Rob Moore, 2003 Unnovations : tommorow's outmoded artefacts today OCLC50214573 , 2003 Screen Burn OCLC57005969 , 2005 Latest work: Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic OCLC165408141 , 2007 Speaking/Appearances: Debate:

The Guardian: Column name: Remit/Info: Satire and critique of cultural trends and issues Section: G2 feature pages Role: Columnist Pen-name: Email: charlie.brooker@guardian.co.uk Website: Guardian.co / Charlie Brooker Commissioning editor: Day published: Monday Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length: 900 words

Articles: 2013 Health and safety, eh? Eh? Health and safety! Health! And! Safety! Eh? - What's the problem with it? A future filled with plastic firearms-on-demand doesn't sound too rosy to me - 13th May Nigel Farage – or how to succeed in politics without really trying - Many people who hate Nigel Farage the reactionary throwback often like Nigel Farage the chortling oaf, almost forgetting he is a politician at all - 6th May Every conversation in history has been nothing but meaningless beeps - Each tweet, each Facebook status update is simply a request for someone else to validate our existence – and the same goes for everyday chit-chat too - 29th April Q: How do you spoil a five-year-old forever? A: Buy him a convertible - It's not psychologically healthy to develop a burning dislike of a small child. But last week … - 22nd April That's yer Thatcher Ding Dong ding-dong: I blame the BBC - Would the Iron Lady get the irony? - 15th April The Voice: not just a talent contest – you can watch it while waiting to die - Will.i.am looks like an action-figure version of himself, Tom Jones is Zeus, Danny O'Donoghue's on Wikipedia and I ruined Good Friday - 1st April Introducing the strangest creature on the planet: the audience - It's not misanthropy. I like the individual people. It's when they get together that they're a problem - 25th March Don't judge me, but I love sniping games - OK, do judge me. But bear in mind I could kill you from a great distance - 18th March Two apps that will transform your life - A couple of ideas for software that will change the world for better/worse [delete where applicable] - 11th March Three unusual birthday wishes - How many of my admittedly unorthodox requests will be granted? Answer: one - 4th March I know in my bones that a robot is going to kill you – the new micro-drones - It's no use hoping a chilling video of drones being developed by the US is a hoax, as made-up tech tends to come true anyway - 25th February On the downside: bad meat and angry meteors. On the upside: awesome footage - This week, I've seen things that have changed me. I have watched animal carcasses being hacked apart and been petrified by meteors hurtling from the sky - 18th February Justin Bieber: Teen pop idols never die. They're gradually unfollowed - After a bumpy start to the year, the rapidly ageing teenywink singing sensation stands at a crossroads in his career - 28th January A big lump of horse ran into your burger? Don't wave it around or everyone'll want one - Cheap food disgusts us, but many of the posh alternatives are just as likely to put you off your dinner - 21st January Django Unchained, Djack Whitehall and Djames Delingpole - What's more offensive: Quentin Tarantino's new film, a bad joke or a rightwing newspaper columnist? - 14th January How not to catch the norovirus - Want to avoid spewmageddon? Here's a simple guide - 7th January

Articles: 2012 From Armchair Paralympian to Paedosavile: my words of 2012 - Never mind omnishambles – my personal dictionary tells you all you need to know about the past year - 31st December The Newtown shooting makes us feel helpless. We don't need to be - We must stop this happening again – and the best way to prevent massacres is to reduce the number of guns in circulation - 17th December Fifteen-minute meals and breakdancing mice: the gifts of Christmas future - The most popular gifts this festive season speak volumes about us as a species - 17th December What do Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises and a burger have in common? - If the year's two biggest blockbusters strive to be meatier than Transformers, hooray. But great pop shouldn't be too po-faced - 10th December Wake up, little one. Wake up and witness the terrifying face of Balok - I try not to expose my baby son to too much TV, but he cannot escape the image on my iPhone - 3rd December 2012's Christmas adverts: horrible singers, horny snowmen and horrendous slave labour - This year's crop of festive high-street commercials feature fey, irritating cover versions and sexist scenarios - 26th November The online highway code: three simple rules to solve the internet - Maybe it's time to lay some ground rules for future users of social media, so they don't fall foul of its potential dangers - 19th November Reports of the Dandy's death are greatly exaggerated - Going all-digital is the best thing that could happen to Britain's longest-running comic - 19th August It's OK to shout at machines – in fact, in the future some of us will find it necessary - If we think we're overstimulated today, tomorrow will consist of flashing lights and punchbags - 13th August The Olympics: better than they looked on the tin - Watching sport is usually less interesting than watching cardboard exist. Now my eyeballs are eating up the Games - 6th August How to fix the missing British summer – and other irritations - We have to do something about the weather soon, before people ask why we are trying to hold the Olympics underwater - 16th July How to fix the missing British summer – and other irritations - We have to do something about the weather soon, before people ask why we are trying to hold the Olympics underwater - 16th July Andy Murray: not miserable, just normal - So what if he never smiles? Can't he just play tennis without having to pull a happy face for you? - 9th July The cast of Geordie Shore are the noblest people in Britain today - They don't simply aspire to be famous, they aspire to be hated. And that's a valuable public service - 2nd July Thank God for Clive James - Reports of the writer's failing health were greatly exaggerated. Tributes flowed nevertheless - 25th June Sometimes it's hard to be a woman. Especially when you're made out of pixels - Why are the female characters in video games nearly always male fantasies? - 18th June Human lives are nothing but a series of unfortunate upgrades. Yes, even yours - Some people say that I've become irrelevant. Well, one day we'll all become irrelevant - 11th June Haven't we had enough of murder on the telly? - Homegrown serial killers. Bleak foreign detective thrillers. You can't go three weekends without another two-part exploration of the crushing banality of evil - 4th June Behold: the Marvel Avengers Assemble 3D experience - It's as good as superhero films are ever likely to get, which is excellent news because they can stop making them now - 21st May When you lose touch with popular culture, it's tough to get back - I haven't seen The Voice, can't name anyone in Britain's Got Talent and don't use Facebook any more. This will never do - 14th May What is the difference between The Hobbit and the news? Not as much as there should be - News reports are looking more like movies – and movies are looking more like news reports. How are we supposed to tell them apart? - 30th April Not excited by the Olympics? Then thank God for the sponsors - British people don't appear to care about the Games, so it's handy there are the Olympic sponsors to help us get into the spirit of things - 23rd April Some people are gay in space. Get over it - Video game players can now identify their characters as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Which is wonderful, unless you're a sad homophobe - 16th April For one week only, I'm allowed to say it: I get babies - Call me dense or cold or both, but I wasn't anticipating the wave of euphoria I'm experiencing now that I've become a father - 2nd April The future of the NHS? Cough up, fleshbags - Introducing competition to the health service will, so the theory goes, improve it. And it doubtless would, if businesses behaved like selfless nuns - 19th March The Sun needs to reinvent itself – less bullying, more of the zany fun of Twitter - The paper called me 'a shouty third-rate TV presenter', which seems firm but fair - 20th February The true value of money – or why you can't fart a crashing plane back into the sky - Banknotes aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief - 12th February When the Daily Mail calls rightwingers stupid, the result is dumbogeddon - On and on the comments went – a chimps' tea party of the damned - 6th February I'm all for sharing, but why the online obsession with revealing every detail of your life? - Facebook and Spotify automatically want to share my every waking action, so that I'm like a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll - 30th January Green Kit Kats, helpful strangers – Japan feels like another planet - For westerners it's an experience akin to recovering from a serious head injury - 23rd January How to save the British film industry, David Cameron style - Attention British film-makers: the prime minister requires you to make more commercial movies. Here's how - 16th January Wondering what to give up for New Year? A few suggestions - Here are one or two things I think the rest of humankind should stop doing immediately - 9th January

Articles: 2011 2011 has been like an end-of-season finale. 2012 doesn't stand a chance - This year, so much has happened it's impossible to remember it all in one go - 12th December The dark side of our gadget addiction - We are addicted to gadgets – but what are their side-effects? In his new drama series, Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker explores the dark side of our love affair with technology - 2nd December There are two kinds of viewer in the world: right and wrong. Which are you? - My vision of global harmony comes in a 16:9 aspect ratio - 28th November The trouble with videogames isn't the violence. It's that most of the characters are dicks - Every pixel in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 oozes machismo, but these games are inherently wussy - 14th November I have been murdered and replaced with a facsimile - I'm jogging, exercising, using gyms – a betrayal of everything I stand for - 7th November Everyone knows David Cameron is a lizard. So why does the Telegraph continue to deny the truth? - Don't just take my word for it. Ask all those who have seen the reptilian demon in action - 17th October Why does the BBC dump so much money in a big glittery bin by making glossy trailers? It turns me silver with rage - All these people should be employed to make programmes, not adverts for them - 10th October The 80mph speed limit is a waste of time - We don't need more speed. We need more dawdling - 3rd October When even Weetabix has turned evil, you know that the world is in a truly sorry state - It's enough to make you long for the days of Gareth Hunt and Nescafé's shaking-a-fistful-of-coffee beans gesture - 19th September The computer that predicts the future - Nautilus foresaw the Arab Spring and the whereabouts of Bin Laden (sort of). What happens next is anyone's guess - 12th September It must be great having a 'passion' for sport. Which is why I'm going to develop one - Cricket? Unwatchable. Rugby? Chaotic. Athletics? No. Just no - 5th September Poor A-levels? Don't despair. Just lie on job application forms - OK, it may be dishonest, but it's cheaper than spending £9,000 on a university course - 22nd August How to prevent more riots - As well as addressing the gulf between the haves and have-nots I'd look at TV shows that confuse achievement with the acquisition of bling - 15th August Bring back hanging? Only a wuss would want to do that. We should bring back the saw instead - If you want to reinstate the death penalty, go for a means of execution that provides maximum agony and maximum publicity - 8th August Let's think outside the box here: maybe blue-sky thinking is nonsense - Steve Hilton, David Cameron's wacky policy chief, is famous in government for his crazy ideas. It's just a pity they're all so crap - 1st August The news coverage of the Norway mass-killings was fact-free conjecture - Let's be absolutely clear, it wasn't experts speculating, it was guessers guessing – and they were terrible - 25th July Rupert Murdoch: what will MPs do without someone to fear? - Britain's politicians have reacted to Murdoch's troubles like medieval villagers realising that God may not exist - 18th July The last News of the World was downright odd - The final edition of the paper was so rose-tinted that you could almost smell the petals - 11th July Ed Miliband's identikit responses: for sanity's sake, we must stop him - The politicians and the media have created a reality deficit. It's only when you stand back that you see how crazy the situation has become - 4th July I almost felt a glimmer of jealousy about not being at Glastonbury, until I remembered the mud - And while staying at home, I learned that BBC2 sometimes still shows Pages from Ceefax - 27th June If the Daily Mail is so worried about the sexualisation of children, all they have to do is hit 'delete' - Starlets and sex, sex and starlets – all of it on plain view on the Daily Mail website which, to the best of my knowledge, has no age restrictions in place - 13th June If the internet gave free back rubs, people would complain when it stopped because its thumbs were sore - Spotify's problem is that no one wants to pay for anything they access via a computer - 6th June Why idolise footballers? It's like living in a world where half of us worship shire horses - Society rewards athletes with astronomical sums. It's wonky and demented, but that's the way it is - 30th May Hollywood shuns intelligent entertainment. The games industry doesn't. Guess who's winning? - LA Noire and Portal 2 are video games that challenge the mind instead of the thumbs - 23rd May Winning a superinjunction no longer guarantees super-anonymity. In fact, it delivers the opposite - Most cases we're learning about aren't shocking corporate coverups but dreary 'shag-and-tells' - 16th May The real victims of the phone-hacking scandal are the tabloid hacks -Their days of making the world a worse place with ease are over - 18th April Your brain may control your computer, but who's controlling your brain? - You wouldn't want a computer to unquestioningly act on what's inside your head - 11th April How to handle the shop snobs - Some people treat waiters and retail staff like scum. But you can do something about it - 4th April How to tweet bile without alienating people. Or making 13-year-old girls cry - The outpouring of bile directed at 13-year-old Rebecca Black for her YouTube song Friday shows how unhinged such mass hate campaigns can be - 28th March Midsomer's plain daft. So why might adding brown faces make viewers suspend disbelief? - The TV audience isn't stupid or anywhere near that prejudiced - 21st March Jamie's Dream School – a youth club with David Starkey instead of a pool table - Dumb though the kids may be, they're just fodder for a shockingly arrogant TV experiment - 14th March I don't hate Macs, but they do give me a syncing feeling - They make you feel good, Apple products – until you try to do something they don't want you to do - 28th February Q: When does a tabloid become crude propaganda? A: When it starts printing it - The Daily Star patronises its readers by repeatedly publishing lies - 14th February Ed Miliband, the Labour leader now known as CUBE DX-9 - Miliband needs to become mysteriously remote, so why not seal him in a box where he's impervious? - 7th February We shouldn't have to feel paranoid about snoops listening in to everything we say - Private conversation is impossible in this new era - 31st January Clegg babbled about Alarm Clock Britain. Miliband invented The Squeezed Middle. What's next – Feety Folk? - We are yet to discover Clegg's stance on Toothbrush Britain or Newtonian Physics Britain - 17th January Complaining about the lack of realism in EastEnders is like moaning that Monster Munch crisps don't taste of monsters - Combining a cot-death with a baby-swap was one extreme event too far for EastEnders fans - 10th January

Articles: 2010 How to cut tuition fees - We should teach only the useful stuff: scavenging, strangling and how to operate a water cannon - 20th December By 2022, there'll be a naked photo of everyone on the planet lurking somewhere in the interverse - What's on your handset? Intimate texts? Raunchy emails? - 6th December You've never had it so good, says Lord Young. By accident. Before promptly stepping down - Just when Kate and Wills had made us forgot about the economy, Lord Young had to come along and spoil it all. But there must be other distractions . . . - 22nd November The words you read next will be your last - Because I'm going to strangle every single one of you ... - 15th November To watch 3D TV, you have to stand up. And wear stupid glasses… - And you still can't see up Noel Edmonds's trouserleg - 7th November Other people's dreams are boring – why would we want a machine that can record them? - Is a dream-recording machine really any use? I don't care about the time you had a fight with Father Christmas in a space station - 1st November All hail the human face of the coalition: Nick Clegg – sad-eyed defender of the new reality - Cleggsy Bear shuffles on stage to say each unpleasant new announcement was the fairest decision taken in our lifetimes - 25th October How to save the economy without really trying: a guide for Gideon Osborne - Time for a nationwide jumble sale. Flog everything we don't need to the Chinese, the Germans, the Mexicans . . . anyone - 18th October Jonathan Franzen's Freedom has been pulped. MORE HEADLINE TO GO HERE - There's nothing like the lonely horror of realising you've made a really massive cock-up - 4th October Team sports are good for teaching kids how to feign enthusiasm and harbour resentment - Standing up to the bullies was not an option for me, but nor was becoming brilliant at sport - 27th September Fast-food success in the UK requires a guilt-free form of gluttony . . . - So why not eat yourself for breakfast? - 20th September Google Instant is trying to kill me - For the sake of my sanity, and my attention span, the war against the machines starts now - 13th September When it comes to phone-hacking, the press is the elephant in the room - Pity then, that the media are too busy dreaming about Hague, cricket and starlet's dresses - 6th September Buzzwords for blowhards - Rightwingers are brilliant at creating snappy-but-misleading nicknames – like fun-size chocolate bars and the Ground Zero mosque - 30th August Ground Zero mosque'? The reality is less provocative - Millions of Americans are furious about the 'Ground Zero mosque'. But it doesn't exist - 23rd August Forget those creative writing workshops. If you want to write, get threatened - And don't ask me for advice. I'd prefer you to never achieve anything. Ever - 16th August Offensive Facebook groups such as Raoul Moat's are 10 a penny. Yet sympathy is in short supply - Raoul Moat group is idiotic on many levels – not least for calling him a 'legend' - 19th July Twilight's sulky vampires are less frightening than a knitted cushion - The campaign for real monsters starts now - 12th July Just as iPhone owners were running out of apps to compare, the nice droids at Apple gifted them the iPhone 4 - Even if the iPhone 4 was biting users' ears off, every iPhone 3 user will wind up buying one anyway - 6th July Why talk to a computer? Surely talking to a human is traumatic enough? - The technology behind Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox should seem impossibly magical, but I see only drawbacks - 19th June The BP spill has poisoned our tongues . . . our poor, crisp, British tongues - Americans used to love an English accent. The oil spill has somewhat destroyed its charm - 14th June Jack Bauer is no more - Now 24 has ended, it's time to put its 'ticking clock' concept to better use - 7th June Help me plan my American road trip - I'm spending a month driving across the US. Assuming I'm not murdered by mad mountain people, what should I see? - 31st May So, artificial life is here, courtesy of Craig Venter. Time to remix humankind… - And while we're at it let's create crocodiles with breasts and cross a cow with a shark - 24th May Never mind the Con-Dem coalition. We want bogeymen and we want them now - Why can't these 21st-century Tories just be massively unreasonable from the outset? - 17th May Political leaks on primetime -Coping with the terror of live television requires nerves of steel ... and a bladder of iron - 10th May Election 2010: Which leader's public persona do you prefer? - At least Gordon Brown's act is almost admirably crap – you can see something awkwardly human beneath - 3rd May (Cif at the polls) BBC debate was a cross between Songs of Praise and Over the Rainbow - I half expected the loser to hand his shoes to Dimbleby at the end before jetting off into the sky - 30th April Teenage paradise: getting a triple-word Scrabble score from Jedward or Yakult - Forget it. We don't need any more Scrabble mutations - 12th April It's the World Cup of crisps! - Just like the real World Cup, but with more crisps and less football. OK, no football. OK, it's just crisps - 5th April The most dangerous drug isn't meow meow. It isn't even alcohol . . . - Newspapers are the biggest threat to the nation's mental wellbeing - 22nd March My plan to save mankind - The hands of time move slowly. And they're tightening round your neck . . . but fear not - 15th March How to jazz up the party leaders' TV debates - There are 76 rules broadcasters have to follow for the debates. But I've found a loophole... - 8th March Want to read this article? Then enter your password - Forgotten your password? That'll be the 58th one you've not remembered this year, then - 27th February In the west, adultery isn't punished by stoning. Instead, the press will kick you until you beg for forgiveness - But for whose benefit are these public displays of contrition? - 22nd February Why I'm an ebook convert - A Kindle or ebook won't have that 'new book smell' – but no one's going to judge you by its cover - 15th February iPad therefore iWant? Probably. Why? iDunno - Apple pretends it will make your life more efficient. Come off it. It's an oblong box that lights up - 1st February Britain tastes better when it's swaddled in Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate - The thought of the Americans meddling with the Cadbury formula is too much for many of us to bear - 25th January Batten down the hatches. Augmented reality is on its way - Who wants to see poor people? Soon, technology will allow us to airbrush them out - 18th January There's no hope left for Labour – apart, perhaps, from hopelessness itself - Brown might as well go for broke with his election pledges – free croissants it is - 11th January

Articles: 2009 Rage Against the Machine? Raging within the machine will do for now - Forget Joe McElderry's weak vocal doodle. Killing in the Name would be a great Christmas No 1 - 21st December Remember those dreamlike images of Dubai? Guess what. You were dreaming - Dubai's fantasy skyline seems to have been built on sand - 30th November The life of Mariah Carey sounds terribly demanding - I can scarcely imagine the level of forelock-tugging servility Mariah Carey must have encountered during her lifetime - 23rd November Christmas is the season of awful adverts - They are smug, stomach-churning and delighted by their own existence - 16th November Hell isn't other people. Hell is buying washing machines from other people - Why does such an apparently simple task inevitably turn into some sort of horrific Kafkaesque nightmare? - 9th November Some people want children to get 'sleeping lessons'. Happy to oblige . . . - You'd think nodding off was something that most of us learn without help. Seemingly not, if health campaigners are to be believed - 26th October Why there was nothing 'human' about Jan Moir's column on the death of Stephen Gately -Jan Moir's rant about the Boyzone star Stephen Gately is a gratuitous piece of gay-bashing - 17th October Ageing isn't fun, but it's better than death, by at least, ooh . . . 8% - I discovered George Osborne was younger than me. Only by two months. But still: younger - 12th October There's too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche. It's time for a cultural diet - I want to be told what to read, watch and listen to - 5th October Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? - Windows works for me. But I'd never recommend it to anybody else, ever - 28th September The doctors were about to stick a needle in my spine. Then it hit me. What if I sneezed? - Yesterday I left Planet Earth for some time – and what a ride it was! - 21st September Charlie Brooker: What links Lord Mandelson, Damien Hirst and the music industry? - 14th September Contemplating the scale of the universe makes a mockery of household chores - News that the galaxy Andromeda is eating stars makes it hard to care about putting out the rubbish - 7th September We watch them on the bus. At work. At play. We have been invaded by screens - They rule our lives. All we need is a screen to have sex with and the circle will be complete - 24th August You know what'll save newspapers? Magic coins. Yes, magic coins. And I've just invented them - Newspapers are dying because of the web. But you know what'll save them? Magic coins. Yes, magic coins. And I've just invented them - 10th August A glance at the cinema listings proves Hollywood's imagination has crashed. Here's a trio of ideas it can have for free - These are desperate times, so here are three deceptively great movie ideas for Hollywood to pinch at its leisure - 3rd August Jokes are funny. Picking them apart isn't. Witness my clown autopsy - A joke about the lung capacity of giraffes was suddenly required - 27th July The very fabric of society is breaking down around us. What the hell is there left to believe in? - Right now all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there's nowhere left to put it. We need new institutions to believe in, and fast - 13th July Random, disconnected babble masquerading as a column? Nope. It's crowdsourcing and it's the future - Splutter all you want. Splutter till your lungs pop and run down your T-shirt. It's my page and I'll do what I like with it - 6th July Michael Jackson's death hit Glastonbury hard – and the news channels harder - Festival-goers did the moonwalk in tribute to Jacko. But for the BBC, ITV and Sky, the news demanded much, much more … - 29th June (See: Michael Jackson: summary) My new hobby? Developing interests. Or trying to. It's not easy though - an old pot is just an old pot - I wish I was into history, but I'm not. Besides robbing me of hours of potential hobby time, this lack of historical interest leaves me feeling guilty and uninformed - 22nd June To some, pets are a source of cute, absolute love. To me, they're a perpetual looming spectre of death - Somebody suggested buying a scorpion or a tiger. That way, rather than worrying about its death, I'd be worrying about - 15th June They say love conquers all. But can your love conquer a pan-pipe cover version of Sexual Healing? - 8th June Women! You have no concept of the depth of male simplicity. And until you do, our world is doomed - We've made a testosterone-sodden pig's ear of just about everything: politics, the economy, religion, the environment ... you name it, it's in a gigantic man-wrought mess - 1st June I went on holiday to escape my London-based life of needless anxiety. Tragically, I've succeeded - I guess I'm supposed to lie back and let go, but in the absence of anything to fret about I quickly lose all sense of my own identity - 25th May The BNP represents Britain's workers? - They don't even represent basic British craftsmanship - 18th May Only a war can save Brown now. That, or bursting into a flood of tears on breakfast television - Brown's protracted humiliation is so total, so crushing, that merely witnessing it feels almost as terrible as being on its receiving end - 11th May In our push-button world of instant results and comfort, lack of control is the bogeyman - This swine flu might mutate. It might grow fangs for all I know. It's beyond our control. Hence the fear - 4th May Breaking news broke my mind - NEWSFLASH! Charlie Brooker's new TV show aims to take a Daily Show-style swipe at the bottomless chasm of 24-hour news. Here, he files from the abyss of 'Current Affairs Land' - 21st March If videogames are to become as popular as TV they need to exploit our humblest fantasies - The most compelling character in a videogame is you. And who gives a toss about you? - 16th March Apparently 65% of us have lied about reading the great works of literature. We needn't have bothered - Who the hell earnestly believes that claiming to have read the Bible from beginning to end will get them laid? - 9th March To politicians, we're little more than meaningless blobs on a monitor. Bring on the summer of rage - We're the ants in their garden. The bacteria in their stools. Politicians have nothing but contempt for us - 2nd March Television has the perfect confidence-boosting answer to credit crunch despair - full-frontal nudity - Which would you rather do? Strip for a camera now and then, or work full-time in an office sitting beside a perspiring Coldplay fan? - 23rd February Exciting new crisp flavours? More like a dirty protest in mass-produced packets - Walkers are keen to point out that no squirrels were harmed in the making of their crisps - 16th February Another day wasted as I turn to the Twittering classes to provide suggestions for my column - There's something strangely compelling about Tweeting. It's the online equivalent of popping bubble wrap - 9th February Chudge, nowtrage and plebbledash - just three of the words to learn from my New Media Dictionary - This week, in a break from my traditional self-centred misanthropic festival of whining, here's an abridged version of the New Media Dictionary; a useful compendium of terms and definitions for the exciting world of modern mass communication - 2nd February Obama's inauguration was the most inspiring thing we've seen in years - and the most terrifying, too - Yes it was inspiring, yes it was uplifting ... but it was also genuinely terrifying on a very human level, because just like you I was watching it with the terrible nagging suspicion that he might get shot at any moment - 26th January Let them eat cake. But first, bark a calorie count into their ears till their heads ring with shame - the Food Standards Agency is launching a scheme to get restaurants to print calorie information on their menus - 19th January Lock up your daughters - I'm looking for a wife - Since no one on earth can possibly match up to my deluded ideal, perhaps it's time to widen the net by aiming low - 12th January Survive 2009 by learning to love and share. Why not start by frolicking in a bubble bath with a neighbour? - The concept of sharing has been knocked out of us. Now we'll have to knock on doors and swap cups of sugar - 5th January

Articles: 2008 What a tragedy the Lapland New Forest attraction closed down. It sounded like my kind of theme park - 8th December 2008 Community payback' bibs? That's rubbish. At least come up with something catchy, like 'scum slave' - It shouldn't be a jacket. It should be a green leotard - and the typeface should light up like a Vegas casino hoarding - 1st December 2008 I practise incompetence at an Olympian level. It takes me 21 days to change a lightbulb - 24th November2008 Tatler's Little Black Book is the most dispiriting document mankind has produced. Fight for a copy - 17th November 2008 Is Obama really president or am I just watching a fantasy? It's almost too good to be true - 10th November 2008 Want a rush of empowerment? Join the angry idiots registering their disgust with Ofcom - The sad, likely outcome of this pitiful gitstorm is an increase in BBC jumpiness - 3rd November 2008 So, you think it's funny to laugh at irritating celebrities when their lives fall apart, do you? - 27th October 2008 CNN's voter approval graph turned the presidential debate into a computer game. Where can I get one? - 20th October 2008 Go on holiday, they said. But the internet and my new phone gizmo mean I can never really leave - 29th September 2008 Have I missed out on a male-grooming memo? Am I a lone caveman in a world of trimmed bodies? - 15th September 2008 An EU ban on ads with sexist overtones? Another quasi-fictional piece of translucent flimflam - The story was a brilliant excuse to print Eva Herzigova's infamous Wonderbra ad yet again - 8th September 2008 I am increasingly concerned that at the centre of my soul lurks a terrifying blankness. Any suggestions? - 1st September 2008 Thanks to China, we have a blueprint for 2012 - virtual athletes and exciting made-up CGI sports - 18th August 2008 Children today are mollycoddled prisoners - it's no surprise they turn into extreme sports fanatics - 11th August 2008 For those people with real imagination, everything is out to get us - from potato peelers to oil tankers - I'm wondering if it's worth setting up some kind of holiday theme park specifically aimed at desensitising visitors to real-life atrocities - 4th August 2008 The sinister conspiracy of silence that masks the awful truth about the horrors of tonsillitis - It's worse - far worse - than international terrorism and child abuse combined - 28th July 2008 Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it - Why bother writing an article at all? Why not just scan in a few naked photos and have done with it? - 21st July 2008 So, you believe in conspiracy theories, do you? You probably also think you're the Emperor of Pluto - 14th July 2008 These days, I assume that everything I do is probed and examined by omnipotent corporations - 7th July 2008 They contribute nothing to society and have no useful purpose. Hats go completely over my head - 23rd June 2008 I'm all for product placement, but why not be really bold? Organise a crime in front of your billboard - 16th June 2008 Despite what Bill Oddie says, animal sex is boring and overrated. Let us count the reasons why - 2nd June 2008 Labour leaders are starting to revolt me as much as Tories always have. Am I becoming rightwing? - 26th May 2008 Attention all boring people: do not ever attempt to chat to me. Any attempt to do so will be met with silence - 19th May 2008 If critics want to ban Grand Theft Auto because it lets you kill virtual people, what world do they live in? - 12th May 2008 Sometimes I feel giddy at the thought of being alive. Does this mean I'm on autopilot the rest of the time? - 5th May 2008 The nit-picking idiocy of 24-hour news TV - 28th April 2008 Getting up early is like exploring a new world... - 21st April 2008 I wouldn't trust Boris to operate a mop... - 14th April 2008 Educational Kinesiology - perhaps the government confused fantasy with reality when it endorsed Brain Gym - 7th April 2008 Being slagged off is good for you - ...on "The Apprentice" - 31st March 2008 A scan has revealed that my neck is older than I am. It's a humiliating birthday present - 3rd March 2008 The furious smoker - 25th February 2008 Smoker's permits - 18th February 2008 How about a range of cards with bitter messages for ex-lovers? - Unvalentines Day - 11th February 2008 Celebrity death-messaging - 4th February 2008 A rogue trader loses £3.7bn. Further proof that the stock market is nothing more than a fantasy world - 28th January 2008 I love complex gadgets. What I can't stand are idiots who don't know which buttons to press - 21st January 2008 Now wash your hands - there's a plague stalking the land...- 14th January 2008 My credit card's been blocked and I'm now under house arrest in New York, sentenced to watch TV - 7th January 2008

Articles: 2007 It's not looking a lot like Christmas - the high street stores have got their ads all wrong - 17th December 2007 So Iran's not a nuclear threat any more? All the more reason for Bush to unleash Armageddon - 10th December 2007 Celebrities on TV are fair game - but Heat was wrong to turn a disabled child into a figure of fun - 3rd December 2007 George Clooney and the coffee pods - 26th November 2007 whatsworthbotheringwith - lists - 19th November 2007 For a show based on the humiliation of K-listers, I'm a Celebrity ... has relaunched a lot of careers - 12th November 2007 I'm on holiday. At home. On my own, a tragic singleton. Still, it's better than becoming a feral killer - 5th November 2007 You want my advice as to whether someone fancies you or not? Just be prepared to go mad for a while - 29th October 2007 My favourite pastime is pounding the city streets in a musical bubble - it feels as if I'm in a movie - 22nd October 2007 Once I bantered long into the night, keeping my fusty neighbour awake. Now I am that neighbour - 15th October 2007 David Cameron's svelte new physique is more PR machine than rowing machine - 8th October 2007 A nine-hour delay at the airport I can cope with, but nothing ruins a holiday like the fear of Nik-Niks - 1st October 2007 I hate offended people and I love offending them. They're the very worst people on the planet - 17th September 2007 You know the best thing about having a British passport? It saves you so much queueing - 10th September 2007 Forget religious fanatics: the greatest threat we face today has eight legs and is hiding behind my telly - 3rd September 2007 Here's the best way to tackle the yobs - publicly humiliate them on Channel Loser - 27th August 2007 I used my pin all the time, but my brain suddenly deleted it. I'll probably forget how to chew food next - 20th August 2007 Nightclubs are hell. What's cool or fun about a thumping, sweaty dungeon full of posing idiots? - 13th August 2007 I am rubbish at Scrabble - but playing it online has taught me how to be really good at cheating - 6th August 2007 Snack Guy, Smoking Guy, Procrastinating Guy - they're all taking turns controlling my brain - 23rd July 2007 Let's hear it for murky lyrics. Well, not out loud, of course, because they're probably too obscene - 16th July 2007 The truth is that airlines have only three types of seats: Misery, Misery Lite and Slightly Comfortable - 9th July 2007 " 'Oh good, its raining again': ...the full Glastonbury experience? - 25th June 2007 Adverts are twee and infantile. Why don't they tell it as it is - just like that nice man who sells Calgon - 11th June 2007 Thanks to the Sun and its 'Pecker Checker', now all men can be hung up about being too small - 4th June 2007 We may be spied upon 24/7 but we're not just blobs on the radar. In fact, we're all supremely important - 28th May 2007 I'm socially inept, but I joined Facebook anyway - even misanthropes hate feeling left out - 21st May 2007 Warning: giving up smoking can seriously damage your health - 14th May 2007 You can't judge a book by its cover - but in Richard Littlejohn's case, we'll make an exception - 7th May 2007 I don't get fashion. Who's issuing all the orders? And why does everyone seem so eager to obey? - 30th April 2007 Shop signs have never been uglier. A stroll down the high street has turned into optical torture - 23rd April 2007 Spoiler alert: Do not read this article if you want to avoid having the endings of several films wrecked for you - 16th April 2007 CCTV cameras that shout at you? All very well, but I have a much scarier idea. Trust me, you'll love it - 9th April 2007 David Cameron is like a hollow Easter egg, with no bag of sweets inside. He's nothing. He's no one - 2nd April 2007 Is there no end to my ignorance? - 26th March 2007 I hate money and I'm useless with it. So haggling to buy a flat is my worst nightmare come true - 19th march 2007 There's only one way for Bush to dig himself out of this unpopular hole - with an ironic shovel - 12th March 2007 My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots - 5th March 2007 Joe Mott's blog heaves with demented beauty - 26th February 2007 I hate Macs - 5th February 2007 It is a truth universally acknowledged that I must be in want of a wife. Well, get this - I'M NOT! - 29th January 2007 Why would I want to hear your opinions when I've got so many more interesting ones of my own? - 22nd January 2007 Concepts replaced by grinning faces? This is not dumbing down - it's dizzying madness - 8th January 2007

The Guardian: 'Screen Burn' Column name: Remit/Info: Irreverent TV programme reviews: "...casts his inimitably jaundiced eye on the key shows on the idiot box." Section: The Guide Role: Columnist Pen-name: Email: charlie.brooker@guardian.co.uk Personal website: Website: Guardian.co / Screen Burn Commissioning editor: Day published: Saturday Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length: 650 words

Articles: Why I'm calling time on Screen Burn - TV stars can breathe a little easier: our uniquely grumpy critic has decided to call it quits - 16th October 2010 archive

Links: Wikipedia biog. List of Blogs about Charlie Brooker