Haywire

The Best of Craig Brown

Craig Brown

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780008557454
• eBook ISBN:
  9780008557461
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Literature

'Our greatest living satirist' Sunday Times

'The most screamingly funny living writer' Mail on Sunday

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four, a selection of Craig Brown's finest writing collected together for the first time.

Haywire presents a survival guide to the 21st century.

The acclaimed biographer of Princess Margaret and The Beatles considers such diverse topics as gloves, outer space, the Marx Brothers, Richard Dawkins, Hitler's hair, John Stonehouse, Katie Price, tongue-twisters, Bruce Springsteen, Harry and Meghan, Stanley Spencer, Brian Epstein, Downton Abbey, Sigmund Freud and Karl Lagerfeld's cat.

With the full battery of the humourist's armoury – clerihews, tongue twisters, whimsy, parody, farce, satire, social observation, nonsense – Brown skewers the fads and delusions of the contemporary world.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• FUN AND GAMES
• It Doesn’t Add Up
• My Lockdown Diary
• The Betting Book
• The Thrill Has Gone
• Sex Sessions in Tyne and Wear
• Four TV Chefs
• The Lift to Outer Space
• A Cricket Critic with an Erratic Racket
• Three Magicians
• Lockdown Dreams
• COMEDIANS
• A Whole Lotta Relephants
• Just Like That
• Becoming Mainwaring
• Tickled Pink
• Tragically I Was an Only Twin
• Going Too Far: The Jokes of Auberon Waugh
• Sigmund and Les in Blackpool
• Put It Away: The Peculiar Life of Kenneth Williams
• THE GREAT AND THE GOOD
• Chips with Everything
• No Countdown on Saturday: Tony Blair’s Diary
• Buzz Is What She Does: The Hectic Life of Tina Brown
• Get You, Maurice! The Cloistered World of Maurice Bowra
• Twenty One Clerihews for the New Statesman’s Centenary
• THE BIG QUESTIONS
• The Great Issues That May Hang from a Bootlace
• In a Nutshell: Vivienne Westwood Has the Answers
• Four Horsemen
• Four Hoarse Men: The Transcript
• The First Briton in Space: Tim Peake’s Tweets
• Mysterious Ways: God and A. C. Grayling
• Three Interviewers
• Not All Pants Are Religious: Richard Dawkins’ Tweets
• Looking to Heaven: Stanley Spencer
• PANICS
• Taking Umbrage
• Clerihews for the Credit Crunch
• I Woke Up in a Sweat: The Nightmares of Tony Benn
• Beyond Livid: Katie Price@MissKatiePrice
• Downturn Abbey Act One: Something Rather Terrible
• FASHION
• Dee-AHN-ah
• On Gloves
• Choupette
• Downturn Abbey Act Two: Wraparound Shades
• Hitler’s Hair
• Three Toupees
• The Last Blazer
• Of Frocks and Fracks: Vivienne Westwood
• M&S
• HISTORY
• In Retreat: The Art of David Jones
• In Our Time
• I’ve Seen Better: The Historical Online Archive
• The Greatest Oprah Winfrey Interviews of All Time: (1) Queen Elizabeth I
• An Historian
• Study Notes for A-Level Cultural Studies 2044: Boris Johnson – The Legacy
• In a Nutshell: Histwee with Lucy Worsley
• The Match with St Trinian’s Has Been Postponed: Ronald Searle’s War Years
• Nothing is Real: The Slippery Art of Biography
• CELEBRITY
• What’s My Line?
• It’s Siiiiiiimon Deeeeeee!
• Eight Things You Didn’t Know about Bears
• Fifteen Clerihews for Strictly Come Dancing
• To Hell and Back with Katie Price
• The First Shall Be Last: Perky and Pinky
• Behind the Scenes at The Life of Mammals
• I Con Hic
• BORES
• See It, Say It, Sorted
• Red Faces All Round: Cricketing Anecdotes
• John Cleese and Eric Idle: Our Twitter Diary
• Nonversation
• Elf Club
• The Ongoing Debate
• Mrs McGinty’s Dead Bored
• POLITICS
• Skin-a-Rabbit!: The Diary of Jacob Rees-Mogg
• Prezza
• Twelve Politicians
• Hoon but Not Forgotten
• Stars in His Eyes: The Twilight Years of Tony Benn
• Resorting to Jane Austen: The Diaries of Harold Macmillan
• Seventeen Prime Ministers
• Yankee Doodle Dandy: The Diaries of Ronald Reagan
• Titter Ye Not
• POP
• In Bowie’s Footsteps
• Blinky and The Boss: Bruce Springsteen
• A Gentleman’s Life: Keith Richards
• Under My Tum
• Sixteen Clerihews for Rock’s Senior Citizens
• Orft We Jolly Well Go: Jimmy Young
• Blackburn vs Peel: The Forty-Year Feud
• The Fragile Life of Mr Epstein
• BAD HATS
• The Man Who Wasn’t There: John Stonehouse
• Four Cambridge Spies
• Never Need a Reason, Never Need a Rhyme: Alan Clark
• The Greatest Oprah Winfrey Interviews of All Time: (2) Jaws
• Onion Scrubber
• Winner Hand
• Piers Morgan’s Life Stories: Kim Jong-Un
• Sixteen Clerihews for the Trump Administration
• ROYALTY
• Shooting Devilled Kidneys: Inaccuracies in The Crown
• A Special Affection for Magnolias
• A Ray of Sunshine: The Memoirs of Margaret Rhodes, Former Woman of the Royal Bedchamber
• His Serene Highness Albert II, Prince of Monaco: Our Exclusive Landmarks
• Little Sign of Slowing Down: Alan Titchmarsh meets HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
• Harry and Meghan in Four Acts
• SELF-HELP
• The Art of Discarding
• Playing the Game
• The Secret of Life: Paulo Coelho
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Simon Heffer’s Correct Englsih
• Robinson Accrueso
• Cupboards Are Ideal for Putting Things In: Mary Berry’s Household Tips
• MEMORY LANE
• Michael Caine Remembers
• Who Is the ‘You’ in ‘You’re So Vain’?
• Paul Johnson: Ten People Who Met Me
• The Art of Irritation: Kingsley Amis
• Memory Lay: Mick and Keith Remember
• Joan Collins: The Men in My Life
• Downturn Abbey Act Three: The World as We Know It
• Dibble Knows What Pitstop Likes: Jonathan Meades’s A–Z of Children’s Television
• Four Soap Stars
• The Garbblach Has Come Home to Karst: The Ancient Journey of Robert Macfarlane
• A Paranoid Is Someone Who Knows All the Facts: Simon Gray’s Diaries
• David Bailey’s Swinging Sixties
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Other Books by Craig Brown
• About the Publisher