Flight From Deathrow — Harry Hill

If Harry Hill isn’t one of your favourite comedians, there’s something very wrong with you. Very much one of the funniest men on the planet, it came as something of a surprise to stumble on this here novel what he done wrote whilst wandering around my local library. I must have sustained damage to my Harry Hill radar a few years ago, as this had not appeared on it at all.

Eagerly I tucked into the book, before deciding that my time would be better spent reading it. How could it fail? The blurb claims it will have men throwing artificial feet at the Communist Party Chairman, and Willie Whitelaw trying to marry a parrot! Genius!

Tragically, and there’s no-one more upset about it than me, it’s not terribly good. With a vague excuse about it being a coma fantasy, conventional narrative takes a back seat to the sort of episodic ramblings that give the distinct impression of each chapter being a proposed line from a stage show that didn’t make the cut spun out and spread thin.

It’s not helped by the fact that much of what makes Harry’s individual brand of offbeat shenanigans work so well is his delivery. I’m not quite so good at that sort of thing so this is concordantly less amusing than I’ve no doubt it is inside Harry’s noggin. If you want a coherent story, which I rather suspect you wouldn’t from anything this chap does, you’ll be disappointed, but if even you’re just after the funny-funny this misses far more than it hits. Stick with the videos.