| Product: |
Round Ireland with a Fridge - Tony Hawks |
| Date: |
15/02/04 (120 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Funny, Honest, Engaging
Disadvantages: None, it's great!
There was a time, not really all that long ago, when travel writing consisted of little more than city and country guides. Nothing that really made you want to up sticks and go places, as they assumed you were either already there or booked to go. The televising of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence" helped increase interest somewhat. However, it took Michael Palin's television travelogues, followed a few years later by Bill Bryson, to bring travel writing to the forefront of public attention.
Both Palin and Bryson came with a new style, more about light hearted observation than the travel itself. In modern travel writing, the journey has more importance than the destination. What happens when you get there has to be fun to tell, no more tales as dry as the road you've travelled in on.
As with anything that has gained success, it would only be a matter of time before more writers took the style and made it their own. Tim Moore has taken the idea of travel, combined it with various well known activities (the Tour de France, Monopoly) and told a tale that's so much fun to read, you can forget that it's essentially travel writing and, therefore, non-fiction.
However, for the best introduction to this new style of travel writing, you can't do any better than Tony Hawks. Over his years in the entertainment business, Tony Hawks has done some pretty strange things. He's provided the voice of a Talking Toaster in "Red Dwarf" and wrote and performed the "Stutter Rap" as Morris Minor and the Majors. He has also made a fairly decent living as a stand up comedian and appears on that kind of radio and TV quiz and panel shows where it helps if you can say a few funny things.
One night, Tony gets very drunk.
Whilst drunk, he makes a bet. This bet is for him to hitchhike around Ireland with a fridge in tow. This is a story of a man, his fridge, and some of the most extraordinarily laid back people in the world.
You'll have to go a long way to find another travel book that begins with a browse through "The Guinness Book of Records", a visit to an electrical store and a performance in front and an introduction to Prince Charles. But, as you will find very quickly upon opening the cover, Tony Hawks is no ordinary traveller.
After all, there aren't too many travellers who get to hitchhike with the support of a national radio show, or who film a TV appearance whilst doing so. There aren't many people who go anywhere, apart from home from Comet, with a fridge in tow, much less surfing with it, or taking it to meet royalty. There aren't too many people who can go through a whole raft of emotions from happiness to despair to triumph in just a single day. And there aren't many people who have such a "completely purposeless idea, but a damn fine one"
This really isn't a book for someone looking to find out more about Ireland itself. Tony Hawks doesn't pay a great deal of attention to the scenery Ireland is famed for, preferring to spend time getting to know his temporary companions. Although there are a couple of occasions he visits places that might interest a tourist, these are the exception rather than the rule. Instead, this is a tour of towns, and the B&Bs and pubs and bars of the area. Whilst this does give a vague idea of where to stay in selected Irish towns, there are no addresses or directions to them, which makes the book of little use as a travel guide.
This isn't really a book about a place, though. It's all about people. The people tha
t helped him on his way, whether they knew what he was doing or not. And it's about the people that made a man and his fridge feel at home in a strange land and in the strangest of situations. Despite the possibility that he had to be insane to be doing what he was, Tony Hawks was welcomed everywhere he went with open arms. Everything you ever heard about the Irish liking their craic seems to be true, even if there is a starring role for a couple of displaced Cockneys.
The true beauty is in the telling of the story. Being a professional comedian, Tony Hawks has an eye for the absurd and the amusing. Even in a situation that is pretty absurd and amusing in its entirety, he manages to pinpoint the amusing situations and highlight them. The result is something very funny indeed, and there are parts that will have you laughing out loud. There's one line involving a nun that made me very glad I wasn't reading on public transport but in the seclusion of my own home.
What I love most about Tony Hawks, though, is his writing style. It's very chatty and conversational. Reading "Round Ireland With a Fridge" is a little like sitting down with a (slightly eccentric) friend in a pub, and opening with the question "How was your trip to Ireland, then?" He tells it in an engaging way that makes you want to know where he ended up next and what happened there, allied to a twinkle in the eye and a ready grin that suggests a joke is about to follow. Indeed, despite my dislike for the medium in general, I suspect this would make a superb audio book in the right hands, as you can hear the story as it feels like it wants to be told.
Unlike some, Tony Hawks doesn't skim over things that caused him embarrassment on the way. There's a fisherman in Bunbeg who knows Tony Hawk
s a great deal better than he'd like to, and it is to Tony's credit that we know about it too. It's not often you meet such open honesty as this in the works of a published author.
If you want to read a Travel Guide to Ireland, buy one. But if you want to read something funny, something heart warming or something that shows the Irish in their best light, read this. If you ever plan to go to Ireland and wonder how much fun it may be, read this. If you have any interest in Ireland and the Irish at all, read this. At £6.99 from Amazon, for a piece of entertainment that seems just as fresh every time to read it, you can't go too far wrong.
But if you do decide to read it in a public place, expect some strange looks.
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