Charlie Brooker

Guide Note

Charlie Brooker, British writer, cartoonist, and television presenter created and hosts the acclaimed BBC Four program, Screenwipe, writes the Screen Burn weekly column for The Guardian newspaper's weekly Saturday listings magazine, The Guide and is a Creative Director for the comedy production company, Zeppotron. Caustic, sarcastic, pessimistic, and occasionally profane, Brooker nevertheless provides intelligent and thought-provoking observations of television, popular culture and their influence on Western society.

Fast Facts

1. Full Name: Charlton Brooker
2. Born: March 3, 1971
3. Wrote for PC Zone magazine in the mid-1990s
4. Current residence: London, England
5. Studied for a BA in Media Studies, but never graduated
6. Born in Reading, Berkshire, but raised in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire

1. 2001: TV Go Home
2. 2002: Unnovations
3. 2004: Screen Burn
4. 2007: Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline

1. "Iraq. I call it a war, but really it's a TV show - a long-running and depressing one that squats somewhere in the background, humming away to itself; a dark smear in the Technicolor entertainment mural. We know it's happening - we catch glimpses of it happening - but we don't feel it any more."
2. "I love complex gadgets. What I can't stand are idiots who don't know which buttons to press."
3. "Here's a sentence rarely used to open newspaper columns: why don't the vast majority of people just blow their own heads off? You, with the coffee cup. You, with the shoes. Why are you bothering? What's the point? Is there a point?"