Amazon.co.uk
Lincolnshire-born Leeds United fan Tim Bradford claims no Irish blood, but is well qualified to write about
Irishry having spent years propping up West London bars wearing a leather jacket and clutching a pint of Guinness. Vaguely based on misguided jaunts to Ireland in 1998 to try and sell his Vauxhall Corsa,
Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? casts him as a Kerouac figure (albeit one who spends more time in the pub than on the road). The book has the potential to be an edgy-but-funny travelogue, but as the preface forewarns, maybe instead you should "think of it as a rambling pub conversation...".
Bradford angrily criticises the Irish theme pubs trend as "a fake validation of the ridiculously chirpy good-time Oirish vibe", while at the same time including a garish full-colour picture of a leprechaun and a string of frivolous anecdotes and cheap gags about "tramps", potatoes, hurling, potatoes, priests, potatoes, bombs, tinkers and potatoes. Since Bradford's fame is as a cartoonist for football fanzine When Saturday Comes, the flippant text is peppered with back-of-beermat doodles, silly crosswords and the like. Those who want humorous travels in Irishry with more plot might prefer Tony Hawks' Round Ireland with a Fridge or Ardal O'Hannlon's amusing novel The Talk of the Town, since Bradford's diary is closer to an Irish joke book to be found in a tacky souvenir shop...Right, whose round is it? --Sarah Champion
Synopsis
A book of Irish journies, both real and imagined, as the author (believing himself to be an East Midlands version of Jack Kerouac) sits in pubs and listens to old men's stories, laughs at and falls in love with mad Irishwomen, sings folksongs, cries in the rain and vomits in soft green fields, while trying to get a decent price for a 1.4L Vauxhall Corsa. On the way he creates some new Irish myths and legends, such as the Singing Leprechaun Liberation Front, Kevin the Carp of Storytelling, the kiln-fired dogshit jewellery and the nymphomaniac jazz chicks.