Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker
Born	Charlton Brooker (1971-03-03) 3 March 1971 Reading, Berkshire, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Journalist/TV critic/TV presenter/TV writer
Known for	Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, Screen Burn, Nathan Barley, TVGoHome

Charlton Brooker, commonly known as Charlie Brooker, (born 3 March 1971 Reading, Berkshire) is an English comedian, cartoonist, journalist, television presenter and screenwriter. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism. He is particularly known for his highly acclaimed TV show Screenwipe and his review columns for The Guardian newspaper, and is one of four creative directors of comedy production company Zeppotron.

Early life and education

Born in Reading, but raised in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire and schooled in Wallingford, Brooker first worked as a writer and cartoonist for Oink!, a comic produced in the late-1980s.

Brooker attended the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) from 1989 to 1992, studying for a BA in Media Studies and specialising in Television and Video Production. He never graduated, however, having failed to write his dissertation. His final piece of creative work at university was a short film called "A Busy Day for Bob Bumstain", which featured stand-up comedian Ian Moore. The film included heavy use of colour-separation overlay and all of the backgrounds featured were cartoons drawn by Brooker.

PC Zone

Brooker wrote for PC Zone magazine in the mid-1990s. Aside from games reviews, his output included the comic strip Cybertwats and a column entitled "Sick Notes", where Brooker would insult anyone who wrote in to the magazine and offered a £50 prize to the "best" letter.

In February 1998, one of Brooker's one-shot cartoons caused the magazine to be pulled from the shelves of many British newsagents. The cartoon was entitled "Helmut Werstler's Cruelty Zoo" and professed to be an advert for a theme park created by a Teutonic psychologist for children to take out their violent impulses on animals rather than humans. It was accompanied by photoshopped pictures of children smashing the skulls of monkeys with hammers, jumping on a badger with a pitchfork, and chainsawing an orangutan, among other things. The original joke was supposed to be at the expense of the Tomb Raider games, known at the time for the sheer number of animals that could be killed. The original title, "Lara Croft's Cruelty Zoo", was changed for copyright reasons and so the cartoon's original intended object of humour was not realised.

SuperKaylo

A number of Brooker's artworks used to be available to the public on his website before it vanished in 2003. This body of work is drawn both from the commissions of his various patrons, and began as a paper comic that was sold to customers at Brooker's former workplace CeX. In addition to its counter presence, Brooker also talked mail order customers into buying issues when they called up to place orders for games.

One aspect of the SuperKaylo site was a series of recorded phone conversations, that had originally started from a commissioned featured for PC Zone on technical support phonelines. Brooker took things further than this half serious investigation, when in 1999 he called up the then editor of Edge magazine, Jason Brookes. Pretending to be an angry father, he phoned up enraged by an advert that had appeared in a previous issue for CeX, one that Brooker himself had written and drawn.

TVGoHome

From 1999 to 2003 he penned the satirical TVGoHome website, a regular series of mock TV schedules published in a format similar to that of the Radio Times, consisting of a combination of savage satire and surreal humour and featured in technology newsletter Need To Know. A print adaptation of the site was published by Fourth Estate in 2001. A TV sketch show based on the site was broadcast on UK digital station E4 the same year.

Television

In 2000, Brooker was one of the writers of the Channel 4 show The Eleven O'Clock Show and a co-host (with Gia Milinovich) on BBC Knowledge's The Kit, a low-budget programme dedicated to gadgets and technology (1999-2000). In 2001, he was one of several writers on Channel 4's controversial Brass Eye special on the subject of paedophilia, titled "Paedogeddon".

Along with Chris Morris, Brooker co-wrote the sitcom Nathan Barley, based on a TVGoHome programme and broadcast in 2005. The same year, he was also on the writing team of the Channel 4 sketch show Spoons, produced by Zeppotron.

In 2006 Brooker wrote and presented two series of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on BBC Four, a TV review programme in a similar style to his Screen Burn columns in The Guardian. The series returned for a "Christmas Special" as well as a "Review of the Year 2006" in December 2006 and a third series in February 2007. A fourth series was broadcast on BBC Four in September 2007, followed by a "Review of the Year 2007" in December 2007. The 5th series is due to start on Tuesday 18th November 2008, with a news spin-off "Newswipe" planned for 2009.

Brooker has appeared on two episodes and one webisode of the popular BBC current affairs news quiz Have I Got News for You. Brooker also appeared on an episode of the Channel 4 panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats, and in December 2006 reviewed two games written by the presenters of VideoGaiden, on their show.

Charlie Brooker wrote for the BBC Three sketch show Rush Hour.

Screen Burn

Brooker currently writes a TV review column entitled "Screen Burn" for The Guardian newspaper's Saturday entertainment supplement The Guide. A compilation of these columns, also called Screen Burn, has also been published. From the autumn of 2005, he wrote a regular series of columns in The Guardian supplement "G2" on Fridays called "Supposing", in which he free-associated on a set of vague what-if themes. Since late October 2006 this column has been expanded into a full-page section on Mondays, including samples from TVGoHome and Ignopedia, an occasional series of pseudo-articles on topics mostly suggested by readers. The key theme behind Ignopedia was that, while Wikipedia is written and edited by thousands of users, Ignopedia would be written by a single sub-par person with little or no awareness of the facts.

On 24 October 2004, he wrote a column on George W. Bush and the forthcoming 2004 US Presidential Election which concluded:

John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, Jr. - where are you now that we need you?

The remark was picked up by the Drudge Report website, which ran it as a headline. The matter was immediately referred to the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., who allegedly contacted both Drudge and Brooker over what was regarded by some to be an incitement to murder the President, although in the introduction to his book Dawn of the Dumb, Brooker denies that the secret service ever contacted him, saying that "they have better things to do".

The Guardian quickly withdrew the article from its website and published and endorsed Brooker's apology. He has since commented about the remark in the column stating:

I ended a Screen Burn column by recycling a very old tasteless joke (a variant of a graffiti I first saw during the Thatcher years), and within minutes half the internet seemed convinced The Guardian was officially calling for assassination. My inbox overflowed with blood-curdling death threats, and it was all very unfunny indeed - a bit like recounting a rude joke at a dinner party, only to be told you hadn't recounted a joke at all, but molested the host's children, and suddenly everyone was punching you and you weren't going to get any pudding. I've had better weekends.

In a 2008 column, he identified himself as an atheist defending moderate Christians.

Dead Set

Main article: Dead Set (TV series)

Brooker wrote Dead Set, a five part zombie horror thriller for E4 set in the Big Brother house. The show was broadcast in October 2008 to coincide with Halloween. It was produced by Zeppotron, who also produced Screenwipe.

Brooker told MediaGuardian.co.uk it comprised a "mixture of known and less well known faces" and "Dead Set is very different to anything I've done before, and I hope the end result will surprise, entertain and appall people in equal measure." He added that he has long been a fan of horror films and that his new series "could not be described as a comedy". "I couldn't really describe what it is but it will probably surprise people," Brooker said, adding that he plans to "continue as normal" with his print journalism.

The series has been commissioned by the head of E4, Angela Jain, and the commissioning editor, Shane Allen. Brooker will be an executive producer alongside Zeppotron's managing director, Annabel Jones.

Publications

• TV Go Home, Charlie Brooker, 2001 (ISBN 1-84115-675-2)
• Unnovations, Charlie Brooker, 2002 (ISBN 1-84115-730-9)
• Screen Burn, Charlie Brooker, 2004 (ISBN 0-571-22755-4)
• Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline, Charlie Brooker, 2007 (ISBN 9780571238415)

External links

• Tribute to Oink! comic.
• TV Go Home
• Guardian Unlimited "Screen Burn" Archive.
• Charlie Brooker's Guardian columns.
• Review of "Screen Burn" Compilation.
• Website for Nathan Barley TV series.
• Review of Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe
• Shuffle's Cue & Ehh? with Charlie Brooker
• Official E4's Dead Set website
• Charlie Brooker's made-up film awards
• Charlie Brooker talks Dead Set