to bang or not to bang (Blast from the Past - Ben Elton)

Member Name: brownp1

Product:	Blast from the Past - Ben Elton
Date:	04/09/01 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: funny, touching, his best work to date

Disadvantages: no

Who remembers Saturday Night Live, the “anarchic” stand-up show from the early 80’s? If you do can you remember who was the most left wing comedian? Correct - it could only be the loveable motor mouth host Ben Elton, whose routines were dominated by bodily functions and Mrs Thatcher, and preferably both in the same sentence.

Roll forward 20 odd years and Ben has now become a figure of the establishment and a respected author. Strangely two of his books Popcorn and Blast from the Past seem to be very open minded ridiculing strong left and right wing views in equal measure – how a huge fat cheque can change your views.

On to the book, what’s it all about? Well the basic premise is that it’s a love story between Jack Kent and Polly Slade.

The story starts 20 years ago at Greenham Common where Jack was guarding the cruise missiles that Polly was spending her gap year protesting against. Definitely an odd couple, neither who would be forgiven be their own side, they are forced to meet in secret. This continues for a few months until Jack gets a promotion and is posted to Germany leaving Polly without even saying goodbye. Over the next 20 years Jack is promoted until he is tipped to become Commander in Chief of the US forces, whilst a devastated Polly rebounds from one bad situation to another until she ends up working for the equal opportunities department and living in a crap bedsit. With this final promotion Jack becomes worried about his past and seeks Polly out to make sure that she will not ruin his career by telling the press about his past. The majority of the book is these two protagonists trying to find out what the other one wants and trying to link it to the emotions they felt in their affair 20 years ago. The only other notable character is Peter who is stalking Polly and whose menacing interruptions add to the tension between Polly and Jack.

Ben Elton extracts huge drama from this sim
ple premise with Jack and Polly each having their turn to appear to be on top of the argument each using political, emotional and sexual arguments to alternatively push away and then attract the other back. This all leads to a final dramatic scene which if I told you about I would have to kill you, but what I will say is that there is a happy ending, it is a love story after all, just not one that I’d even thought of.

Also as you would expect from Ben Elton the book is funny, maybe not laugh out loud funny, but definitely a constant silly grin funny. The humour comes from examining both the right wing necessity to have to shoot and kill anything that moves including the phallic possibilities of a cruise missile, and also the left wing effect of peace camps and positive discrimination whilst also probing another favourite subject – bedsit life.

Overall this is a good read, funny and touching in equal measures and Ben Elton shows us that as a writer he is constantly improving and far removed from the knob gags where he started from.

Summary: