Customer Reviews
Very , very funny - By: D. J. Dubery, 06 Jun 2008 
One of lifes joys.... Giles is a wonderful creation. It's something of a mystery why the BBC hasn't released more of Giles' mis-adventures. I think the Germany trip is the highlight of this particular collection, where Giles discovers just how much pork one man can eat.... Highly recommended.
Pure Comedy Gold - By: William Burn, 20 Mar 2008 Marcus Brigestocke is a many of a great many talents, but they all seem to be unitedin two greater gifts: the first is to make people laugh (a great deal), & the second is to identify & expose the (frequently wilful) short-sightedness which characterises so much of human behaviour. Many will know him from The Now Show on Radio 4, where his angry young man rants against policies & practices that destroy the environment have made him a personal favourite of mine.
But it wasin the guise of the delightfully idiotic Giles Wemmbley-Hogg (two m's, two g's, from Budley Salterton) that I first encountered his art, & it remains one of my favourite comedy series for radio. For those who don't know, Wemmbley-Hogg is a rather dim young man, only recently out of Charterhouse, off on his travels around the world. For anyone who has ever "travelled" abroad (and I use the word advisedly: this is not tourism, but rather the backpacking, earnest & frankly impossibly annoying habit of young people on gap years (before, after or during university) who wish to experience a country on an "authentic" level, away from the corrupting influence of modern tourism & western culture. Except that these people largely deserve nothing but contempt: their world view consists largely of vacuous platitudes about how profoundly they have been changed by the poverty/landscape/injustices/local culture that surround themin any given location, & their entire source of knowledge is the Lonely Planet to whichever country is unfortunate enough to have merited their arrival, much like a plague of locusts, this year. These are people who will scoff at anyone who deigns to pay a premium to a rickshaw driver who livesin his vehicle & for whom foreign tourists offer at least a brief respite from the appalling conditions of his existence. These people strut around, deriving almost pornographic pleasure from the poverty of the poor individuals who surround them, & yet whose understanding of local economic or political conditions could be written on the back of a fag packet.) Having written that, I find myself rather liking Giles. He is, frankly, too stupid to hold any of the views which so irritate me, & his bumbling innocence throws light on the more self-serving habits of the "gap-year generation" which he inhabits.
I'm not sure if this is a review, really, but to gesturein that direction, I will say that this is a very, very funny audiobook, & if you enjoyed the first series, you'll love this.
