Dead Famous (Big Brother)
June 8th 2006 05:11
Dead Famous by Ben Elton
'Dead Famous' picks up on a fictional Big Brother-styled TV show. We start the story with some detectives, who are reviewing back tapes of the past 27 days of the show to look for clues... for someone has been murdered on the show and no one knows who did it! And the housemates have decided to stay in the house with the murdere, and they don't know which of them did it either!
It's through this deft mix of murder mystery and modern-day satire that Ben Elton pulls us in. There's a lot going on, and he manages to keep all his plates spinning right up until the end with more than a few surprises for the reader. We see the 10 housemates up close and we see how their images are manipulated and how they try to present themselves and what motivates these sort of people to put themselves in the public eye in the first place... most of all, we see what a boring bunch of twats they are and how banal and base the reality of reality TV is.
Elton has built up a large following of fans with his novels... he runs at controversial topics head on, grasps with both of his hands and shakes the fuck out of them so that you question the way our society works and how unfairly we are played sometimes. And, all the while doing this, he makes us laugh too - his sense of humour encompasses the low brow and the high brow... he can be silly and he can be serious, we recognise the exaggerated faults of his characters in those around us and on our television screens, and we cringe as much as we laugh. More so than other author (or at least most popular and entertaining at doing so) he holds a magnifying glass up to our society and says 'Fuck you, look at that... tell me what's wrong with this picture' and, amazingly, he doesn't do it in a pushy way.
Author Ben Elton in stand-up comedian mode.
Of all the Ben Elton books I've read this is probably the best... it's the funniest and it's the most tightly plotted. It's the one that feels like it's had the most work put into it anyhow, he manages to service all his twists and turns and fifteen or so central characters in 370 odd pages and there's not a wasted sentence, underdeveloped character or poorly-executed idea amongst them. If you're looking for something to read that's worthwhile and important but doesn't bore the pants off you than Ben Elton is probably the best place to start, and this book is probably the first one you should read - especially with Big Brother burning up our TV screens yet again.
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