The Book, The Film, the T-shirt - Softcover

Beaumont, Matt

3.72

333 ratings by Goodreads

9780007127672: The Book, The Film, the T-shirt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007127677 ISBN 13: 9780007127672

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2002

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One week in the making of a TV commercial for car tyres – told by the inimitable Matt Beaumont, author of e

It’s a simple enough proposition. Blackstock Tyres want to advertise their product on TV. They employ an agency, Scheidt Fuller, with a reputation for innovation and creativity – and the trouble begins.

The director’s an auteur, the extras think they’re in an art movie and the client keeps changing the script. Worse, the stars of the ad were prime-time sitcom lovers on and off screen, darlings of the media – until yesterday, and now they can’t stand each other. But they’re all professionals, right?

Who’d have thought an allergy to rubber would be so dramatic?

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Review:

Fans of Matt Beaumont's hilarious first novel will pick up its successor The Book, The Film, The T-Shirt with some trepidation (can he pull it off again?), but rarely has a follow-up been so sharp and enjoyable. And not only has Beaumont triumphantly bucked the "disappointing second novel" trend: this sardonic and grimly funny book many not be as innovative as its predecessor, but it's every bit as cutting-edge, with just as diverting a cast of larger-than-life characters.

The central premise here is the following of one week in the filming of a tyre commercial. Greg Fuller has negotiated the dangerous waters of the ad business for some time, and he's convinced that the script he has come up with to sell his client's round chunks of black rubber will blow everyone away (not least as he has been setting up some prestigious Hollywood stars to appear in the ad). But (of course) things quickly go pear-shaped. The director is a volatile primadonna, the client is as much of an idiot as everyone who has hired Greg in the past, and the two stars, a much-loved TV couple, cordially detest each other. The recipe for disaster is in place, and, boy, does Matt Beaumont deliver. Ten years ago, readers turned to Tom Sharpe for the kind of bitter, sexually graphic humour that informs every paragraph here. But Beaumont is Tom Sharpe for the modern age: his cold-eyed, all-stops-out vision of the media world and its denizens is an absolute scream. And how many books can boast a talking foetus? --Barry Forshaw

Review:

‘Beaumont...is a technical whiz at his craft...He succeeds. Humour, feelgood factor, mild suspense...it is one airport novel that is definitely designed to take off’ Guardian

‘An author who really stands out with a multi-voiced, short, sharp read...hilarious. He is very clever’ Bookseller

‘This is Jeffrey Archer with irony...you’ll be highly amused.’ Daily Mail

‘Toe-curlingly good...makes you laugh out loud’ Campaign

Praise for e
‘A brilliantly plotted comic novel about life in an advertising agency, narrated entirely through office emails. It gives me more sense that literature is alive and kicking than anything else I’ve read in these millennial 12 months.’ Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times Review of the Year

‘Lively, viciously funny and about as switched on as a novel can be’ Mirror

‘Hilarious’ Cosmopolitan

‘A genuinely enjoyable page-turner’ The Times

‘e is the most enjoyable, addictive read I’ve had since Bridget Jones’ Lisa Jewell

‘Here’s a book that recognises our true priorities: blame-shifting, arse-covering, personal enhancement, shagging – and, oh yes, the odd advert. Matt compresses into a few weeks a dazzling cascade of events, most of which have either happened at one agency or another or are otherwise completely believable. A finer observer of agency politics you’ll never meet.’ Andrew Cracknell, Campaign

'Depicts the Machiavellian scheming and summary sackings of the ad world in withering detail and with no shortage of dead-eye wit' The Times

'Groundbreaking...an internet-enabled Clarissa for the 21st century' Evening Standard

'Hysterical, sensationally funny' Arena

'Read it, wipe away your tears, then read it again' Company

'Fab debut...lock eyes with Matt Beaumont. Your career may depend on it' Kirkus

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