Charlie Brooker

Speaker 30:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:48

My castaway this week is the satirist Charlie Brooker. Sardonic, deadpan, scabrous, and snarky, his forte is skewing the vacuity of so much of modern life, brutally and brilliantly dissecting everything from the hackneyed tropes of T V rolling news to the dystopian possibilities of our techno-dependent lives. Oh, and politicians. He's really got it in for politicians. His innate pessimism must surely feel a tad strain these days, what with all those glittering awards, best-selling books, and happy family life to have to deal with, but he soldiers on, dutifully ploughing his relentlessly misanthropic furrow in pursuit of laughs and truth. He was just sixteen when he started, working back then as a cartoonist and writer for a kid's comic. But for a long time success seemed far from certain, with much of his twenties spent lying on the sofa, watching T V and bitterly shouting, I could have done that.

Presenter1:46

These days, he says, there's still a lot to be angry about, but you get tired rather than mellowed, and instead of clenching your fists and throwing plates, you just get slightly weepy and despairing. Welcome, Charlie Brooker. What in the world particularly is making you weep right now?

Charlie Brooker2:03

Come!

Charlie Brooker2:04

Quite a lot of things, I think. I mean, I can vacillate between being despairing about the state of the world and being contrarily optimistic. I think there's something in me that I tend to worry about the state of the world. Then, when everyone is worrying about the state of the world, I sort of think I can put my feet up.

Presenter2:24

I described you in the introduction there as a satirist. There is a school of thought that that what's happening currently in the world, specifically geopolitically, is is sort of beyond satire right now. What do you think?

Charlie Brooker2:27

Um

Charlie Brooker2:36

I think that's possibly true. I don't know that I like the term satirist. I don't really know. Why do you have liked? I really don't know.

Presenter2:44

Writer, director.

Charlie Brooker2:45

thing, humanoids. I honestly don't know. I think that at the moment it's a very difficult time to be doing any kind of state of the nation stuff because this is a a period where someone's sort of ripped out the tablecloth and all the plates and cutlery are flying around the room and it's very hard to sort of get a sense on where it's all gonna land. It's a very interesting time.

Speaker 12:55

Because

Charlie Brooker3:06

But it's a very confusing and um worrisome time.

Presenter3:09

Um very, very pleasant as you come in here today, sort of smiling and affable. Not at all as we see you on television. How much of that is a sort of confection to turn a buck, and how much of it might be just a a magnification of who you are. Oh, how cynical to turn a buck? Me, cynical

Charlie Brooker3:25

But a cynical cynic what a cynical accusation. Um, I think when people meet me in the flesh, often they're surprised that I'm not like this deadpan, horrible, sarcastic monster that I play on television.

Speaker 13:36

Uh

Speaker 33:36

That's it.

Speaker 13:36

By a

Speaker 13:38

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker3:39

And I think it's become increasingly clear as I do more of those shows, like the wipe shows, that that is a sort of comic persona that I adopt, which is the world-weary sort of cynic who will say almost anything and is bitterly angry and will say incredibly dismissive things and is very hard to impress. Whereas in real life, I think I'm probably both a lot sort of goofier and more awkward and far less certain of my opinions than I am on screen. Which I, as I say that, half of my head is screaming, you liar. I am sitting back in my chair, mouth and keep. But because I think I've often played a persona, I will often exaggerate my position in print for comic effect. There's often a lot of truth in what I'm saying, but primarily when I'm writing things, my job is to entertain rather than to inform. So I probably fall into the trap of exaggerating my own position on things, and then I can sort of step back and look at something later and go.

Presenter4:17

Mm-hmm.

Charlie Brooker4:38

I don't know that I'd be that strident, really, at a dinner party. It wouldn't take much pushback from another guest to go, Well, I don't know that that's true for me to be staring at the plate and spluttering and quite embarrassed.

Presenter4:40

Really? At a dinner party?

Presenter4:49

Let's go to the music, Charlie Brooker. Tell me about your first one then. What is it, and and why is it important to you?

Charlie Brooker4:53

It's impossible to boil down your choices to wait. So I'm trying to pick things that kind of cover a whole genre. So this is the Beatles. I got into the Beatles quite late, so probably about 2002. And this is Tomorrow Never Knows, which I think is probably the high point for me of where pop meets experimentation. And I could listen to this endlessly.

Presenter4:56

Yeah.

Speaker 35:22

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

Speaker 35:29

It is not dying.

Speaker 35:33

It's not dying

Speaker 35:37

Lay down but surrender

Presenter5:44

The Beatles and Tomorrow Never Knows. Charlie Booker, you have one? Two Emmys for your show Black Mirror. It originated on Channel Four, it's now on Netflix. It's a very dark comedy. It focuses on the dreadful possibilities of our technological future and where it might take us. Are you intrinsically a worrier? Are you somebody who does sort of spin out thinking this'll all end badly?

Charlie Brooker6:05

Yes, you could pretty much show me any object. You could show me a cotton wool ball and I would extrapolate from that to how that would ruin my life or kill me or destroy the world. Somehow I could pretty much catastrophize anything. I mean the weird thing is that I find it hilarious to think of these scenarios. I've always been quite fascinated by both comedy and sort of horror. It feels to me like there's similar bits of your brain can be used for thinking up scenarios. Because often comedy you're sort of extrapolating from some sort of twisted logic. And that is often what happens in Black Mirror and and shows of that ill.

Presenter6:47

You have a piercing turn of phrase. For example, Ever had sex with an incredibly skinny person, it's like fighting a deck-chair?

Presenter6:56

Horrible thing to say. One of my favourites. How much does that reflect your internal dialogue?

Charlie Brooker7:03

Vivid imagery. I think I have a very visual imagination. Are you making

Presenter7:04

Yeah.

Presenter7:08

Are you making yourself smile?

Charlie Brooker7:09

Let you go through the day.

Presenter7:10

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker7:10

Uh no, I probably don't make myself laugh unbidden like a lunatic. No. But if a particularly horrible turn of phrase occurs to me in conversation, I cannot then resist carrying on, especially if people are saying, Oh, please don't say that So that's a very childish relish I take in that kind of vivid and unpleasant

Presenter7:36

It's

Charlie Brooker7:37

Imagery.

Presenter7:37

Yes. For many years in your television shows and also in your your columns for The Guardian, you you spent a good deal of time well these are your words here s saying cruel things about public figures for comic effect. As you became better known obviously you would get invited to lots of fancy media things. Did did you bump into any of the people that you'd you'd been cruel about? I did. I was at the end.

Charlie Brooker7:58

Edinburgh T V Festival and somebody who had written some horrible thing about a show they'd been in.

Charlie Brooker8:05

came over and just said, Oh, you wrote the and I was immediately like massively embarrassed and they were being fine about it. I remember quite clearly thinking,

Charlie Brooker8:15

This person is just trying their best to present a show. And when I was writing those TV columns, I would say all sorts of things. And then, probably, as I got older, you think, well, someone has picked that up and read it, and it's ruined their day. And for what? Really? I'm commenting on a TV show. I'm not commenting on something of great import. And so I can see that it's a valid form of humor, but I lost my appetite for just doing that.

Presenter8:48

Charlie Brooker, let's have your second disc then.

Charlie Brooker8:50

Ah, well, now this comes from the soundtrack to the film Dougal and the Blue Cat. When I was a kid, I used to listen to it again and again and again, and I was fascinated by it, but also utterly terrified of it, because the whole thing was creepy and eerie. And it had moments like this, which is a song sung by Florence from The Magic Roundabout, as her and her friends are chained up in a dungeon, and the lyrics get increasingly paranoid and sad.

Speaker 39:21

Shall we ever see the sun again?

Speaker 39:27

Shall we ever feel the rain again?

Speaker 39:32

Shall we ever play our games again?

Speaker 39:37

Or will the games we play end here

Speaker 39:45

Two.

Speaker 39:46

Where are you?

Speaker 39:48

I'm sorry to go.

Speaker 39:50

I'm sorry.

Speaker 39:52

It's all my fault.

Speaker 39:54

But I thought everything was all right.

Speaker 39:56

Like it usually.

Presenter9:57

That was Eric Thompson with Florence's sad song from the magic roundabout film Dougal and the Blue Cat. You can dry your tears, Charlie Brooker. You were born in nineteen seventy one then.

Speaker 39:57

That was it.

Presenter10:07

What sort of little boy would I have met?

Charlie Brooker10:10

Apart from I was always fascinated by things like that creepy song from Dougal and the Blue Cat, I do remember relatively early on realizing that nuclear war was a real thing. I watched things I probably shouldn't have watched. There was a QED show, the BBC did, which dramatized the effects of one nuclear bomb dropping on London and showed you how terrifying that would be. Then there were threads like the year afterwards. And I remember watching these things and kind of not being able to process.

Presenter10:28

Uh

Charlie Brooker10:43

what that meant. Not understanding how society kept going and why people bothered going to work and feeding ducks and getting on buses and weren't weren't just weeping and screaming.

Presenter10:48

I won't.

Presenter10:53

How old would you have been when you watched that?

Charlie Brooker10:58

What?

Charlie Brooker10:59

Yeah, I think so. But I mean, what explanation can you give? They probably said something about don't worry about that, that won't happen. But that's not. That wasn't enough. I was seeing it being dramatized on television. I thought I assumed it was going to happen. And I think in the 80s, it did seem like that was going to happen. And my grandparents on my mother's side were heavily into CND. They used to run Quaker meeting houses and things like this. There was a CND magazine called Sanity. And I remember finding a copy of Sanity and leafing through it. And there was this horrific description of, I think it was like Hiroshima or something like that. And there was a description I read of the body of a pregnant woman being found inside a septic tank after the nuclear block. I remember reading this at some early age and then going, oh my goh, and putting it down. And so I had those thoughts in my head. I don't know. And that never really went away, I think.

Presenter11:52

That's quite a lot to

Presenter11:54

I have in your head at eleven.

Charlie Brooker11:56

Yeah. I supp yes, I suppose it is. But it um but it was reality at the t I used to have lots of dreams and nightmares about sort of it was either nuclear war or asteroids, weirdly, coming

Presenter12:07

It's a high anxiety level, a high

Charlie Brooker12:09

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker12:11

Yeah, but then it it's not good to use the term OCD in the wrong context. I know I understand but I am a little bit I'm someone who I'm quite a control freak in that I don't like flying. I don't like anything where there's any degree of risk that I cannot control. And so I think that just set every light on my cockpit flashing wildly, the thought that there's this looming threat out there that I can do nothing about. In a weird way, I'm almost relieved now that nuclear weapons are back on the agenda because I sort of think everyone forgot about them for a while and I was thinking, well, I've never forgotten about those.

Presenter12:14

I know I'm buttons.

Speaker 312:45

Hmm.

Charlie Brooker12:45

This is a nice uh it's a cheap

Presenter12:48

Fearful topic of conversation, isn't it? And just to reinforce it, let's have a bit of your music then. Let's go to your third one. Tell me about this. Well, this isn't a disc.

Charlie Brooker12:55

Really? It's a cartridge. So I'm ch I chose it. This is representing all of computer game music in my head. This is the theme music from the Game Boy version of Robocop. And it's a piece of music that I think is better than it had to be for a Game Boy game.

Presenter12:57

Yeah.

Presenter12:58

So

Presenter13:47

That was RoboCop by Jonathan Dunn. Charlie Brooker, when did you start playing at computer games?

Charlie Brooker13:52

At the earliest opportunity, I do remember when I must have been about seven or eight years old, there'd be a family outing to the local swimming pool. And the highlight for me was that afterwards it was a sort of leisure area, and they had a couple of arcade machines, and it would be like Space Invaders and Breakout and things like that. And I would go over, and if I had money, I would put it in. And if I didn't, I would pretend I was playing. I think I was fascinated by the thought that you could control this image on a television. It was like a magical thing to me. And so from that point on, I was hooked. And so, as soon as I could, I remember getting a ZX80 from a jumble sale. Then I sort of saved up and begged and got a ZX Spectrum for Christmas, I think it was, when it was like 1982, 1983. And from a very early age, I just thought this is there's something about this as a form of entertainment that I cannot get enough of.

Presenter14:49

Uh let's talk for a moment about humour then. You know, there is a great power in humour. Can you remember when you first used humour to effect?

Charlie Brooker14:56

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker14:57

That is a good question.

Presenter14:59

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker14:59

I mean, I know apparently I was a cheeky kid, like early on. I was like, yeah, I was a little.

Speaker 115:03

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker15:07

I can't say the word, but you know, I remember I sort of learnt to draw cartoons. I used to get like whoopee and whizzer and chips and these sort of comics. And they did a little cut out and keep series of how to draw cartoons. And I remember thinking, oh, wow, okay. So if I learn this, and then I started drawing my own comics, loony comic, it was called. And there was a box of comics for the kids to read at my primary school if it was raining. And I made my own comics to go in there. It's interesting because I don't have a memory of anyone opening them, reading them, and laughing, actually. They used to amuse me.

Presenter15:43

So that was the important bit.

Charlie Brooker15:44

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter15:44

Yeah, I mean they were quite odd. Was humour a currency in the household? I mean, were you know, did your mum and dad have a sort of sharp sense of humour?

Charlie Brooker15:51

Yes, generally. My dad has quite a cynical sense of humour, and I do remember that he would encourage me to watch Monty Python, and then we would watch things like Faulty Towers and Black Adder. I think the things that were very formative for me were things like Kenny Everett, Monty Python, The Young Ones. And I remember at one point writing the script, writing the script out longhand in an exercise book, because I just wanted more of the young ones than existed. To what extent were you academic as a kid? I was rubbish. So most of my school reports say.

Charlie Brooker16:24

There's one that taught me the word idiosyncratic.

Speaker 316:27

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker16:27

It is idiosyncratic. And I don't know if it's laziness or just that the things I was interested in were not the things I was being taught. I don't know. But now I regret the fact that I didn't pay more attention at school because I feel quite ignorant a lot of the time.

Presenter16:42

Let's have some more music, Charlie. Um so what's your next one? It's your fourth.

Charlie Brooker16:45

This is probably one of the first proper albums I bought. I remember hearing Monkey Gone to Heaven on the ITV chart show and just having a moment of going, What on earth is that? I've got to know what that is. And buying Doolittle the album, and this is Debaser by the Pixies.

Speaker 317:05

I want you to know. Slights in our eyeballs, I want you to know. Girl, it's so proven. I want you to know. Don't know about you.

Speaker 317:17

I am wool, shed, and losier. I am wool, shed, and loser.

Speaker 317:25

I am Lucia. I am.

Speaker 317:29

Shine Andalusia Wanna Grow and to be a Democrat!

Presenter17:40

That was the Pixies Andy Baser. I feel as though I should at this point be saying so on you went Charlie Brooker from Westminster School to Cambridge, embarking on a stint in footlights. Because when I used to watch you on television, when I first saw you, that's who I thought you were. You sort of presented on television as one of those people. Oxbridge. Yeah, you had a lot of social confidence. So where did that all come from?

Speaker 117:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie Brooker17:58

Mm-hmm.

Charlie Brooker18:00

Oxbridge.

Charlie Brooker18:05

That's quite fascinating because I probably have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about not I didn't go to Oxford, I didn't. I went to Wallingford School, which is a comprehensive in Oxfordshire, and then I went to the Polytechnic of Central London. I find it quite fascinating that you you say that I seemed very confident because that is a complete and utter

Speaker 118:10

Uh

Speaker 118:14

Okay.

Charlie Brooker18:24

Facade. I knew I wanted to be working in comedy or something like that, and I couldn't see a way into it. I mean, I got a job writing video games reviews for a magazine, because I've been doing comic strips for a computer game shop. And one of the other writers said, Well, why don't you try and write some video game reviews for us? Why don't you do that? And I remember thinking, Well, I'm not qualified. I couldn't do that. So I spent a lot of time quite annoyed about that, that I didn't feel that I knew what the way into things were.

Presenter18:52

And this idea of spending your twenties mostly lying on the sofa watching T V and bitterly shouting, I could have done that.

Charlie Brooker18:59

Yeah.

Presenter18:59

Uh

Charlie Brooker18:59

Hmm.

Presenter19:00

Uh what were you watching that was eliciting? That

Charlie Brooker19:03

Well, actually, more than thinking I could have done that, I was probably thinking, I wish I'd done that, and I couldn't do that. What an important thing. So I was watching things like The Day-to-Day, Brass Eye, Chris Morris, Vic Reeves. I mean, particularly The Day-to-Day and Brass Eye. And I would think, I wish I was doing something like that. I cannot see how you get to do that. And it's a cliff face with no foothold. You can't see how to get into it.

Presenter19:08

And I couldn't do that. What an important thing is that I'm watching.

Speaker 319:12

Hmm.

Speaker 319:14

Yeah.

Presenter19:30

And so looking back at that period in your life, how did you avoid becoming just another embittered, gormless stoner to whom it never really happened?

Charlie Brooker19:39

Never really happened.

Presenter19:40

Oh. Boy, did

Charlie Brooker19:41

Yeah.

Presenter19:41

Entirely. No, I'm not saying I mean, you did that in that period, but then you stopped doing it.

Charlie Brooker19:43

Did that in the

Charlie Brooker19:44

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker19:45

I was lucky. Two things sort of happened at the same time. I did some silly sort of phone call things for the magazine, and that got me hired in a roundabout way to work on a Radio 1 10 minutes a week technology show, which was quite anarchic. I guess I was learning, oh, right, you can do stuff in broadcast, and I was enjoying that. This was like the mid-90s. I used to do comic strips, and I'd try and put them online, but they took so long to do that I thought I need to have some discipline and create something regularly. And so I started doing this thing that was like a parody of the Radio Times, and it was called TV Go Home. And while I was doing the radio show, my co-presenter, who was called Rachel Reynard, said to me, While you're working for the BBC, you shouldn't do this Radio Times parody because you'll get in trouble. Can't be doing the two things. And I panicked and got these guys called Dave Green and Danny O'Brien, who ran this geeky newsletter, to host it anonymously. And that weirdly gave it a sort of cachet and it became a little cult thing. And that sort of opened the door to me being offered jobs. And so, whenever people say to me, How'd you get into things? I always say, Now, we'll just try and create something small. Let's go to your next piece of music. It's your fifth.

Presenter21:01

Tell me what we're going to hear.

Charlie Brooker21:01

So, this is a piece of music by an old flatmate of mine, an old friend of mine called Richie Warburton. And during the 90s, we shared a flat and it was tiny, and we would sit in a haze of smoke watching TV. I'd be commenting on it bitterly, and he was meanwhile using Q-bass to create electronic music round the clock. So, this is a particular track of his called The Scoops that formed the backdrop to probably about a year of my life.

Presenter22:10

That was Richie Warburton, your former flatmate. My former flatmate. With the scoops there.

Charlie Brooker22:13

With the screen.

Presenter22:14

Charlie Brooker, let's talk about love. Okay.

Presenter22:19

I don't know why I'm laughing.

Charlie Brooker22:20

Yeah.

Presenter22:21

Uh you married the T V presenter, former Blue Pizza host, of course, Connie Huck, in 2010. It seems after something of a whirlwind courtship, you'd been going out for just nine months. Yeah. You married in Vegas.

Speaker 322:30

Yeah.

Presenter22:33

That all points to the the possibility that there is a rather romantic fluttering heart underneath that cynical carapace of yours.

Charlie Brooker22:39

Well, who doesn't have a romantic fluttering heart? Some people don't. Do they not? I think so. What's wrong with them?

Presenter22:42

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker22:44

Yeah. That was absolutely the right time. It was weird because for years I'd not known if I wanted kids or a family. That seemed like something that other people did in some way. I couldn't perceive of that as a future.

Speaker 122:57

In the wild.

Charlie Brooker23:01

And then Connie came along and quite early on she said, Well, you know, I want kids and a family and and and this sort of thing and I heard myself going, Okay and sort of thought, Oh, right, why have I said that? Um and it was sort of the best decision I ever made.

Presenter23:19

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker23:19

Yeah.

Presenter23:19

And so being happy and having two little children and finding the thing that you thought might not be for you.

Speaker 323:27

Yeah.

Presenter23:27

It must have fundamentally changed you.

Charlie Brooker23:30

I used to write columns where I was like, I hate kids. I will never have children. And then I remember when Connie was pregnant with our first son, Covey, and this was in like 2012 when he was born. And it was a thing I could worry about, the pregnancy.

Presenter23:33

I hate

Charlie Brooker23:46

But my biggest fear was that I'd heard about people who like dads who the baby is born and they just don't connect. Well, for whatever reason, they don't really emotionally connect with the and I didn't really get babies and kids, and I was like, That's gonna be me.

Charlie Brooker24:04

What if I feel nothing? And then, in the event, there was an emergency C-section, there was a bit of drama going on, which I was weirdly calm for.

Charlie Brooker24:12

And they pop up the sheets like a magic trick. Basically, it's horrific. And they bring out this little screaming baby and hand it to me. And because she was so out of it, I was the one who was immediately like, and it was like an upgrade was being installed in my head. I shouldn't call it an upgrade because I can still totally understand when people don't want kids and they're sick of people banging on about how their kids have changed them, whatever. However, I felt like I had been reprogrammed in an instant and I had a new mission. It's like you go down in the hierarchy.

Speaker 324:46

Yeah.

Presenter24:47

Yes.

Charlie Brooker24:47

Immediately. And there's this new thing that.

Presenter24:47

Yeah.

Speaker 324:47

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker24:52

You must care for. I cannot now watch films in which there's a plot device where a kid goes missing or something. If I know that that's in the synopsis, I'm out because it just upsets me. Having kids ruins your life in the best way possible because suddenly you can't ever relax again. You can't just do what you want. So it wrecks everything, but at the same time, it gave me a sense of purpose that must have been profoundly lacking before, and I wasn't aware of it. Charlie Brukel, tell me about your sixth piece. Oh, well, this is just a very beautiful piece of music. And we use this as a motif throughout Black Mirror, actually, and we used it as an earnestly beautiful song. It's Irma Thomas and Anyone Who Knows What Love Is.

Speaker 325:40

You can blame me

Speaker 325:44

Try to shame me

Speaker 325:47

And still I'll care for you

Speaker 325:55

You can run around

Speaker 325:59

Even put me down.

Speaker 326:02

Still, I'll be there for you.

Speaker 326:11

The world may think I'm foolish.

Presenter26:18

That was Irma Thomas and anyone who knows what love is. Charlie Brooklyn. Looking at your work rate over the past four years, it seems pretty relentless to me. And you also have two young kids. Are you tired? Do you want to take a break? What do you do to relax?

Charlie Brooker26:31

I fantasize about taking a break. I don't really get any time off at all at the moment because doing Black Mirror means that you're constantly, and I've got a co-show runner there. So Annabel Jones is a co-show runner. So we share the duties there, but it's seven days a week sort of round-the-clock job. I have a regular little thought, which is maybe I'll just completely retire in a couple of years' time and just, or take five years off or something like that, and just stop. Having said that, I can't remember the last time I found myself without a conveyor belt full of things to do. Whenever I have been in that position, I immediately start panicking. So I think that's the freelance mentality that never quite leaves you.

Speaker 327:09

So,

Charlie Brooker27:13

And also because I don't have

Charlie Brooker27:16

leisure time, really, at all. I don't understand what my purpose is if I'm not

Charlie Brooker27:24

Terrible, isn't it? And these are first, this is a first world problem. I am not complaining. Well, you live in the first world, so you are. I live in the first world. It's an amazing job.

Presenter27:28

In the first world. So you're going to be able to do that.

Charlie Brooker27:32

It is knackering, but it's at least it is fulfilling, so I cannot complain about it in that respect. Let's give you a couple of minutes' rest at least and play some music. Um it's your seventh.

Charlie Brooker27:44

This is now. I really love Radiohead. They're probably my favorite band overall. And their most recent album, which was a moon-shaped pool, I have listened to more than any other album of theirs because I found it was the one thing that gets me to go to sleep. And that is not an insult to Radiohead. I found this sort of device that you can get that's like a sort of flat headband with headphones that are flat in it, so you can lie on it crucially. And if I put that on and an eye mask and listen to something like a podcast or an album, I will go to sleep. Do you have a problem sleeping, Jeremy? Oh, for years I've struggled. I've terrible insomnia for years. And finally, this seems to be the thing that has largely touch wood cracked it. So I listen to this album literally either every night or if one of the kids wakes me up at five o'clock in the morning or something. I'll listen to this to go back to sleep. So I picked a track almost at random. This track is present tense.

Presenter28:15

Oh yeah.

Speaker 128:16

Yeah.

Speaker 328:52

I want to lounge a penny drop

Speaker 328:57

Oh stand there.

Speaker 329:00

Won't slack up all this love will be in vain.

Presenter29:13

Radiohead, present tense. Uh Charlie Brooker, you have one columnist of the year for your work on on The Guardian. The titles of your books I Can Make You Hate and the Hell of It All neatly sum up probably your your approach to commentary when you work there. I'm wondering what it is, however.

Presenter29:29

In life that brings you joy.

Presenter29:31

Uh

Charlie Brooker29:32

My kids do? I mean, it's like that's that's a simple answer, isn't it? Yeah, my wife's kids basically.

Presenter29:37

Can you build it?

Presenter29:39

Can I bear it? Some people who are very acutely tuned to the world find, you know, joy just incredibly emotional and poignant.

Charlie Brooker29:46

5.

Presenter29:46

I do

Charlie Brooker29:46

It's interesting you say that because it is usually accompanied by a terrible s s sense of foreboding. I don't know why I laugh as I say that. There is something crushing about seeing your kids playing and there having a barrel of laughs about

Speaker 329:56

But

Speaker 129:56

Uh

Charlie Brooker30:05

Or even weirdly, if they're very upset about something that's so minor, like, you know, they built a little den out of cushions and it fell down and they're crying, and they're doing that while y you've just seen a news report about something utterly appalling happening.

Charlie Brooker30:21

The cognitive dissonance that goes on there, I do find that heartbreaking. For instance, I wouldn't allow myself to have a pet now because I know it will die. And I immediately go there and I can't bear the thought of it. That mindset is probably true of a lot of comedy fans, comedy writers, horror fans. These are all ways of exploring that sensitivity. Certainly, I guess, laughing at or about it, having a dark sense of humour is definitely a defence mechanism, classic gallows humour.

Speaker 330:31

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker30:51

Sometimes if I if I think of a particularly sick joke or something like that and somebody goes, I don't know how your mind works, I sort of think, Well, why doesn't yours work that way?'Cause that's the bloody world made.

Presenter31:03

You spent very many years passing comment on other people's work. Do do you care about what critics think of yours?

Charlie Brooker31:09

Um

Charlie Brooker31:11

Yeah, and yes and no in that, well A, it would be extremely hypocritical of having written loads of extremely critical things to get prissy about somebody else doing that would be ridiculous. And also that no matter what somebody says, it cannot be worse than the voice that's criticising you in your own head while you're writing anything. There's a constant voice that's saying, oh stop it. Oh just give up. Rubbish. And if you did something well, it sort of says, well, you got away with that. That was lucky. Wait till next time.

Presenter31:47

Right. Is there anything about being on the desert island that you will actually look forward to?

Charlie Brooker31:52

Um, well, in many ways the solitude of it,'cause I'd probably always been quite a solitary person. Not now, because I've got a family and stuff, so but generally I was probably always a little emotionally distant, lost in a daydream most of the time. I'd go crazy after about four hours, but there's something very comforting about that as a thought. Having said that, I would die very quickly'cause I couldn't fend for myself.

Charlie Brooker32:19

Not before you'd listen to your final disc, then let's hear this. So, yeah, so I apologise in advance. I want to put in a stupid song, and this is a willfully ridiculous song that amuses me greatly. And I played it to my kids, and they fell about laughing at the fact that this exists. They are three and five years old, and in some ways, they're the perfect audience for it. This is The New Potatoes by Denin.

Speaker 332:59

Leave in the field.

Speaker 333:10

Potatoes, we are the new potatoes, we are the new potatoes.

Speaker 333:16

And look at Titus No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Presenter33:21

That was denim and the new potatoes. Charlie, it's time for me to give you the books, as I do to every castaway: the Bible.

Charlie Brooker33:29

Yeah. Great.

Presenter33:29

The complete works of Shakespeare.

Charlie Brooker33:32

Yeah.

Presenter33:32

Yeah.

Charlie Brooker33:32

Yeah.

Presenter33:32

And one other book.

Charlie Brooker33:34

I'll go for Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a very slim book, which is good. I like a short book. And'cause it's about people stranded on a desert island and they evolve.

Presenter33:45

That's yours.

Charlie Brooker33:45

We shall give you that. Your luxury will be what?

Charlie Brooker33:48

Can I have a Nintendo Switch? I think you probably can. It's a games console. And something like that. It's a time sponge and I could lose myself for hours and forget that I was stranded on this terrible place.

Presenter34:02

For the sake of balance, I should say that other games' consoles are available.

Presenter34:07

Not here and not now. Um if you had to save just one single disk, which one would it be?

Charlie Brooker34:13

Yeah.

Presenter34:13

You know what I'm gonna ch

Charlie Brooker34:13

Because i it it amuses me the thought of being stranded there with only the new potatoes. I'm gonna go for the new potatoes. It reminds me of my kids. And also there is s there is something darkly amusing about the thought of being stranded there and the only form of music

Presenter34:18

You are not going to do that.

Presenter34:30

You said it would take you four hours to go, Matt. I think it's going to happen more quickly if that's your single disc. I think that would keep you going for longer. Charney Brooker, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter34:59

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews at bbc.co.uk/slash desertisland discs. And I have a favour to ask: if you could rate and review the programmes wherever you download your podcasts, it'll really help other people find us. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 135:21

Hello, I'm Michal Hussain and just before you go, I want to tell you about the Best of Today podcast. It's where you can catch up on the biggest interviews with newsmakers, top politicians, A-list actors, business leaders and the best of the BBC's reporting from around the world. Don't worry, if you've had a line and missed us this morning, it does happen, you can catch up anytime, anywhere, at home, on your commute, while you're out and about. So why not join those who listen daily and subscribe to Best of Today from wherever you get your podcasts and start downloading now.

Speaker 336:08

This is the BBC.