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Dead Famous is Dead On

In the 1960s I read Terry Southern's novel The Magic Christian. In that story, an eccentric billionaire fills a pool with excrement, urine, and blood, throws some money into center of the mix, and tells people that they can have the money if they are simply willing to swim out into this Dantesque morass to retrieve it. There were many takers. At the time, in my naivety, I assumed this was but a mere allegory, a cautionary tale about greed, and not something that would actually happen in reality. But then came "Reality" TV, If you have watched television at all in the last 25 years, you have no doubt seen real people eat deer genitalia, live cockroaches, and road kill just for a "chance" to win a few thousand dollars. Why do they put such things on the air? The TV execs in Ben Elton's Dead Famous would tell you that it is because these degrading acts are "Good Tele."

Dead Famous is both a biting (no, make that "stabbing") satire on reality programming and a well-crafted mystery. As the book begins, the police are already on the set of the latest Big Brother-like reality show. There's been a murder, and despite the fact that all of the suspects were locked into a house in which 30 cameras and 40 microphones are recording every second of the day and night in every inch of the house, no one can figure out who the killer is. The rest of the story is told as a series of flashbacks in which we get to know the vain, backstabbing contestants, some of whom have secrets, and the rapacious producers who exploit, manipulate, and betray the contestants for the sake of improving the show's market share.

Dead Famous is funny and well written. It skewers reality shows, the shows' contestants, and the people who watch them.

WARNING: There is a lot of sex and potty talk in the book, but since much of it is in "British," you can just pretend you don't have the slightest idea what the author is talking about.

Very funny

I've been doing an IT-job(wanna-escape-from-the-economic-and-personal-slump)related training in Brussels for the past few months and it did not take me long to stumble upon a great used book store during my lunch break. Although the bulk of their stock are French books - a language that, over the years, has done enough rusting in my brain due to relative disuse, I no longer feel comfortable enough with to properly read novels in - they have a great selection of English novels and to a lesser extent, Dutch.

On top of that, I've never seen such a crowded book store, especially not a used book store, so they always have lots of new (old) stuff coming in. And the prices! I paid one shiny euro for Dead Famous. Awesome! Needless to say, I usually come out of that store with an armful of novels, which I cram into my backpack and later stuff into my dangerously bulging book case at home. So, basically, I try not to go there anymore, and when I do I have to strain myself to only buy one or two.

Having to take the train from Antwerp to Brussels and back every day also gives me a lot of opportunity to dig in and do a lot of reading, which has honestly slackened in the past two years, reasons of which are manifold.
"I've been given the gift of time!" (brownie points for whomever equals my fanaticism and gets that pop reference.)Unless there are crying babies nearby, crying babies really kill my lettermood. Humbug.

Anyway, all this clearly has fuck all to do with Ben Elton's Dead Famous, besides the fact that I bought it... in a bookstore, I just wanted to tell you all that I'm having fun reading on the train. Best part of the day, easily.

I picked this up because I've been meaning to read one of Elton's books, since I adore Blackadder and because the concept sounded really interesting. Perhaps the book did not completely live up to my very high expectations of it. I didn't laugh as much as I had expected and the solution didn't really come up as a surprise, but! It was still all quite clever, I've never read a book like this before, the combination of parody, pop culture and murder mystery was quite thrilling. It was a real page turner, with lots of red herrings to make me doubt (a little), and it really was funny. It's just my nonsense expectations. Loads of the characters are quite annoying, but that is the point, of course and along the way you really grow into them.

Very entertaining read.

Not my thing, but a satisfying ending.

Despite this being a very noughties book in some senses, I think it says a lot about the lead-up to our currently constructed culture wars. Also, I’m sometimes worried he’s on a neoliberal pedestal, but manages to charm me enough in the end. Great intro to Ben Elton!

This is the most British book I've ever read.

Introducing House Arrest, a reality show where the general public is locked in a house for a couple of months for a prize of half a million pounds (basically the same format as Big Brother).

Day 27 starts like any other until one of the housemates is murdered live on the Internet feed. Who's responsible? The house is full of cameras, so this has to be an easy plot to solve. Right?

The characters and the dialogue here are the worst the UK has to offer. The whole thing made me cringe, but I could not put this book down. The same reaction I have every time I watch a reality show. The second-hand embarrassment is real.

I enjoy this a lot. The only criticism I have is that I felt the conclusion was too drawn out.

Four stars.

There's been a murder in the Big Brother house, only it's not called the Big Brother house, because the fictional TV show is called House Arrest. The plotting is clever, keeps the reader in suspense. However apart from the cynical old cop, the characters are not sufficiently different to always know who is speaking.

My main objection to the book is that I thought of it first- Big Brother was obviously asking for a murder, or even several! I'd conceived a parody of an Agatha Christie style murder mystery, but hadn't committed anything to paper before Ben Elton came along with Dead Famous... dammit!


Is it worth reading? Maybe not. This isn't Ben Elton's best book and Big Brother became a true parody of itself long ago so, really, who cares?

DNF. Got a hundred or so pages in before I gave up. I didn't care about any of the characters, or who the murderer was; or, in fact, who was murdered. Thought it might be a nice light read, something I don't usually go for, but just couldn't get into it.

This book grew on me. At 20 years old, it's a detective novel meets Big Brother satire. As soon as I gave up on the idea that I might actually get a laugh out of it--there were few and far between--the novel picked up. Whilst it's clearly taking the piss out of a TV Show now many years absent from our screens (and, contrary to expectation, I actually started feeling nostalgic for it), it's not belly laugh territory. But the detective element is pretty good. The characters are fully fleshed out and for half the book the twist is that you have to figure out WHO DIED. I loved that.

Won me over by the end. It all held together and, the hallmark of a good detective novel, I realised I should've guessed who dunnit.

I bought another Ben Elton novel immediately afterwards to see what the rest are like. Recommend, but not strongly.

Chloe met Layla at the door of the limo. She looked rock-chick stunning in black leather trousers and a black-leather bra, while Layla looked hippie-chick stunning in a tie-dye silk sarong and cropped silk singlet. The women hugged and kissed as if they were long-lost sisters instead of complete strangers, one of whom was paid to talk to the other one.

Synopsis: How could it be possible to get away with murder in an entirely sealed environment, every inch of which was covered in television cameras and microphones?

A murder mystery set on a UK reality show that makes very little bones about being Big Brother under an assumed name, this book is great for you want a crime novel you can read with your brain in the Off position.

While it does pose (and for me, satisfactorily answer) the question of how to kill a person on the uber-filmed reality tv set, it was more notable for two things: 1) how authentic the reality show setting felt, and 2) how well it hid the identity of the victim for 200 or so pages without being smarmy about it.

Y'all, that's a hard thing to do.

The show House Arrest goes from ratings slump to worldwide media domination when one of the ten young, keen, grinning and ruthless contestants is killed on-camera by someone who successfully conceals their identity. As the police investigate, the show becomes a massive hit and guessing who did it becomes as important as who's voted off next.

The setting is impressively convincing. There's both enough behind-the-scenes detail to convince you of Ben Elton's bonafides, and the contestants themselves are intriguing, with cheerfully dingy pasts and characterization a-go-go. And that's how you can pull off not announcing the victim for 200 pages. Brilliant.

I've seen exactly one episode of Big Brother, and this was some ten years ago, but every small detail rang true, and if it hadn't been Big Brother, it could easily have been The Real World, or The Bachelor or that one weird one about dysfunctional couples stuck on an island together to see who cheats first. I don't know. They all blend together after awhile.

The only downsides to the book were that I hated the investigating officer (but I suspect I was supposed to hate him in some degree -- not that that made him more tolerable) and after the murder is solved (with suitable fanfare) the winner of the show is announced afterwards as a sort of "Oh, and Person X was the winner ...And now back to (Annoying) Cops!"

And I was like, but but but...THE SHOW WAS THE BEST PART.

Sigh.

There's also a romance hinted at that I would've loved to see fall apart for a good ten pages or so, post-denouement, after the two contestants escaped the set.

I ask for so little, people. I really do.

I really didn't think I'd be as into this book as I wound up being, and in fact stayed up half the night once I got stuck into it.

Next thing you know, there'll be a reality show about people reading books killing other people reading books. Just you wait...

I read this book so many years ago that I couldn't remember much about it. In fact I wasn't aware I'd read it until half way! And even then I wasn't sure 'who dunnit'.

It's about a Big Brother type TV program and it's pretty excruciating. The police superintendent and his staff have to watch all the episodes, and most of the stuff wasn't even shown on TV, and it's pretty horrible.

But it's sexy in parts, stupid of course, funny in a horrible filthy kind of way, ugly where the show-owner is involved, but gets progressively funnier as the book develops.

In fact by the last fifth of the book it's uproariously funny and finishes with a real bang!

VERY well worth reading.

Big Brother crossed with a murder mystery.
I took this book from the book exchange pile at work while I had nothing else to read, and I’m surprised by how much I got sucked into it.
10 contestants enter the house and at first it’s a lot of character descriptions to remember, but you eventually work out who is who. Murder ensues on camera, and they have to catch the killer.
So much of the story was highly implausible that I was rolling my eyes, but if you suspend disbelief and go along with the ride, it’s prerty fun. I didn’t pick the ending, which is always nice in a murder mystery novel.