I don't have a heart. I have an unbeating onyx cricket ball. And stone-cold marble eyes. And a brain woven from tangled wisps of cynicism. I'm a miserable robot. Pity me.
Charlie Brooker is a "writer, producer, and self-indulgent cry-baby", according to his book
The Hell Of It All. In less self-flagellating terms, he's a British comedian, columnist, writer and host of several television shows. One of the best (relatively) new faces on British television and a well known example of a
Caustic Critic, he started his career as a reviewer for the magazine
PC Zone. In 2000, he went on to pen a column called "Screen Burn" for
The Guardian newspaper, which went on until October 2010, where he announced its discontinuation. These columns are collected in (to date) three books:
Screen Burn (2004),
Dawn of the Dumb (2007) and, as mentioned,
The Hell Of It All (2009).
His most well known work however is likely to be his television writing: he wrote on
The Eleven O'Clock Show, and was one of the writers on
Chris Morris's controversial
Brass Eye episode about
paedophilia. Brooker also co-wrote
Nathan Barley with
Chris Morris, after creating the character on
TV Go Home.
In 2006 Brooker began a television program on
BBC 4 called
Screenwipe (and later a spin-off focused on news reporting called
Newswipe). This program, which largely skewers bad television programs and deconstructs the nuts and bolts of making them, as well as showing the sour underbelly of the television world, is one of the chief influences for
Yahtzee's
Zero Punctuation review style. He also released a
Poorly Disguised Pilot special called
Gameswipe, which focused on video games. Brooker even mentions on his
twitter that he wanted to get Yahtzee on
Gameswipe, but it didn't work out for various reasons.
In 2009 Brooker created a panel show called
You Have Been Watching, which discusses television. The show was picked up by Channel 4 and has aired two 8-episode seasons so far, with guests including
David Mitchell and
Frankie Boyle.
Although mostly known for his comedy, in 2008 he took a departure from that to write his BAFTA-nominated
Dead Set, a five-part
zombie series, set in the
Big Brother house. He's also the writer behind the
Black Mirror trilogy, a collection of non-related dark comedies.
He is now Mr Konnie Huq (of
Blue Peter fame). A reference to
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife on this page was previously edited out because it was too subjective, but any familiarity with his
Screen Burn columns tells you that
he'd probably be the first to agree. ("Physically, Brooker resembles a cross between a white
Laurence Fishburne, a paedophile walrus and a scowling pork knuckle," according to the biography in his books.) They have a baby boy.
According to The Attery Squash he,
like
Devo, is
right about everything.
Stuff that Charlie Brooker has been involved in:
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