Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena by Diane Morgan.

 Diane Morgan regularly appeared as Philomena Cunk on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe on BBC television. Her character did wonderful pieces of mockumentary to camera in a dead pan manner poking fun at many things. I loved the television programme, so I bought the book. I did not want an audiobook as I do not want somebody wittering on into my ear.

So how does a television programme I loved transfer into a book? 

BRILLIANT, as the whole book is done in character. The personality of Philomena Cunk shines through from the very first word to the last. Diane’s accent and voice rings in your head as you read the words. This is satire at it’s best. The book is formatted as an A to Z of things important to Philomena. She has a lovely bending of the truth and develops conspiracies of things that could be true. Philomena also has great word play, not just misspellings but using the wrong words in an innocent manner. Her character is dim, but nice. She presents an alternative view on history and life.

This book is very British, with numerous cultural and geographical references. Quite often when you read a memoir of a comedian, there are very few jokes throughout the book. Cunk on Everything is VERY different and is like a transcript of a stand-up comedian’s full length stage show. I found this book to be very entertaining and simply a joy to read. This is a quality, satire read. Editing was spot on and there are no wasted words, it is comedy gold. It also makes you think and forces you to refresh your views of society here in the UK.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Cunk on Everything and found it an OUTSTANDING read that gets the top score of 5 stars from me. I highlighted 75 sections of text on my Kindle to use as a quote later, but I do not intend to copytype them all. So here are 5 clips to demonstrate the quality of Diane’s writing....

You might think our closest planet is the Moon. But you’d be wrong. Because our closest planet is Earth. Earth is the science name for the world, so it has two names, like Puff Daddy and everything in Wales.

The Big Bang was where everything started. And to be honest, it’s nice to have something to blame. What was it like? Nobody knows. Because nobody was there to see it. Like Top Gear when it went to Amazon.

Science can’t decide if a carton is a bottle or a box, because it looks like a box but you treat it like a bottle.

David Bowie was a series of different singers from between the years 1969 and 2016. Although it was the same person, like Doctor Who he regenerated every album or so into a new Bowie.

Police try to stop crime - but couldn’t exist without it. If there was no crime, what would they do all day, except putting addresses on bikes with that hammer? If no one’s going to steal those bikes, that’s just decorating, and much harder to justify as a reasonable spending of taxpayers’ money.

Cunk on Everything was written in 2018 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.