Charlie Brooker
Series: Screen burn
This week Charlie takes a satirical look at his own career to date
- Charlie Brooker
- The Guardian, Sunday 09 May 2010
- Article history
Charlie Brooker is an English journalist, TV presenter, critic and gobshite. He has only 3 jokes which he recycles endlessly in pessimistic diatribes which are then passed off as gritty satirical humour. He is a well known nerd and often reveals himself to be one of the insufferable pricks that he so often rails against. He is easily identified by his sneering contempt and his habit of overusing extended metaphors like a minor royal failing an 'A' level poetry course.
Brooker grew up in the toxic shit stack known to the people of Britain as Reading. He went on to flunk out of a BA in Media Studies at the Polytechnic of London village. Having failed one of the easiest courses at London's crappest polytechnic Brooker became a bum for most of his 20s, doing little else but sit in his flat playing computer games and smoking weed. Like most past-it middle aged under achievers he likes to use this cannabis use as a pitiful excuse for his lack of significant achievements.[1]
He eventually found work writing for a nerdy computer magazine called PC Zone where he tried to spice things up a bit by including a load of shock images of children torturing and maiming animals, but the readers failed to see how funny he'd been. The magazine was pulled from newsagents shelves all over Britain, but after the shitstorm died down a bit he was quickly snapped up by the Guardian as a stable mate for annoying shit stirer Julie Birchill.
Brooker began to hone his so called comedic persona in his Screen Burn column in the Guardian which he began writing 2000. His running joke was that he never wrote positive reviews about anything, offering only a constant diatribe of gratuitous and profane drivel that was passed off as satirical pessimism. After several years of writing only negative reviews he began interspersing occasional positive reviews where he over-enthused about sad nerdy crap such as computer games, cop shows, zombies and computer games about killing zombies.
In 2004 he used his Grauniad column to call for the assassination of George W. Bush, winning him plaudits from across the left wing media. Brooker's Grauniad column has an ever increasing fan base of emotionally unstable sycophants and in 2009 he realised that he was definitely a past it sell-out when he was described as "edgy" by the British Press Association.
In 2006 Brooker was given the opportunity to present a TV review show called Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe on BBC4 which was like Harry Hill's TV Burp for pretentious people. It basically consisted of an endless loop of low budget out-take TV moments interspersed with smug and contemptuous comments from Brooker sitting in his own living room. His on-screen persona has been described by experts as "a shield of radioactive bullshit that hopefully provides just enough entertainment value to stop people kicking their television sets in".[2] In 2009 Brooker lazily adapted his Screen Wipe format to use bits of recent news footage instead of general TV gubbins to make 2 series of News Wipe on BBC4.
Brooker made a Big Brother-Zombie snuff movie, but it was only watched by his fanbase of nerds, geeks, sycophants and a few Big Brother fans, although most of the Big Brother fans turned it off pretty quickly when they realised that it was just some vile nerdboy fantasy rather than the footage of intellectually sub-normal attention seekers incessantly squabbling for 10 weeks that they prefer to watch. The undisputed highlight of the show was the snuffing of Davina McCall, unfortunately she came back as a Zombie, a part she did not find hard to act.
Brooker's hypocritical conversion into a smug "B" list TV personality was completed when he began fronting his own out-take based chatshow cum scripted comedy quiz on Channel 4 called You Have Been Watching. This weekly show is depressing to watch for several reasons, the guests are of the not quite funny enough to get on QI calibre, Brooker's hoard of fawning sycophants have made him believe that he is a lot funnier than he actually is and his nerdy social inadequacy is often painful to to watch. The single biggest failure is the way Brooker has ditched his previously successful formula of sitting on his own bitterly slagging things off, to prostitute himself into a bland formulaic genre of the kind that he would previously have contemptuously dismissed as abject and mundane.
- This week Charlie has been making a fortune through hypocritically turning himself into one of the smug TV personalities he has spent most of his career bitterly slagging off.
Comments[edit]
- n00b
- 9 May 2010 17.01
First!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- n00b
- 9 May 2010 17.02
Second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Private Dick
- 9 May 2010 17.03
This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted
- English peasant
- 9 May 2010 17.05
Charlie your so great, you are my hero.
- Weedfan
- 9 May 2010 17.06
no wonder you are so cool
this just goes to prove my theory that everyone who has ever been cool is a stoner
- Hot Chick
- 9 May 2010 17.07
I love you Charlie.
- Private Dick
- 9 May 2010 17.08
n00b, kindly go away. It's people like you that ruin the internet.
- English peasant
- 9 May 2010 17.09
In my previous post I meant to say "You're" not "your". Guardian staff please give us an edit function so we can correct any embarrising mistakes in our posts.
- Fanboy
- 9 May 2010 17.09
I wish I was like you Charlie, you are so cool.
- Warhammer
- 9 May 2010 17.10
I love your work Charlie, I read your blog every week and this one is the best I've ever seen. Amazing.
- English peasant
- 9 May 2010 17.11
Hot Chick - I love you Charlie
You dont love him as much as I do.
- Monkeyman
- 9 May 2010 17.11
I almost shat myself laughing when I read the last paragraph. Great work Brooker.
- Trollboy
- 9 May 2010 17.12
I wish all you sycophants would just fuck off.
- English peasant
- 9 May 2010 17.14
Trollboy - I wish all you sycophants would just fuck off
I'm not a sycophant, I just think Charlie is soo amazing and brilliant, he's always funny and can't do anything wrong.
- Blessed are the meek
- 9 May 2010 17.14
ONLY A GENIUS LIKE CHARLIE BROOKER COULD SATIRISE HIMSELF SO BRILLIANTLY
- SavvyChick
- 9 May 2010 17.14
I agree with Trollboy, these sycophants make me want to be sick
the article was ok. well written. it was ok. wouldn't make me fawn over you though, like you were some kind of guru.
i think all the men on here either want to be you, or have gay sex with you.
- Spivlord
- 9 May 2010 17.16
Charlie Brooker's left-wing bias sickens me. The biased left wing press are always trying to oppress the noble capitalists, why is he allowed to get away with it?
- Godwin
- 9 May 2010 17.17
Spivlord, you are a Nazi.