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What's Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion
 
 
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What's Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion (Paperback)

by Mark Steel (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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What's Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion + Reasons to be Cheerful + Vive La Revolution
Price For All Three: £18.33

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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (4 Aug 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1847372813
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847372819
  • Product Dimensions: 23 x 15 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 25,302 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

Comedian Mark Steel, has spent most of his life a committed, signed-up member of the Socialist Workers Party. The Labour Party coming to power in 1997 could have been the start of a new political dawn for Mark and for Britain. But instead, big business and war-mongering thrived under New Labour, and in many ways the working class seemed to become more marginalised. Petty bickering and in-fighting racked the SWP, numbers dwindled horribly, socialism became a dirty word and Mark Steel began to think the unthinkable ...do I really want to belong to this rabble anymore? At the same time, entering his forties, Mark's personal life began to disintegrate. Spending many sleepless nights on the sofa, watching inane cable TV into the early hours of the morning, Mark asked himself the question, 'What is Going On?' In a book that goes right to the heart of Britain and the problems it suffers today, Mark wonders why over a million people marching in London couldn't stop the war in Iraq, why supermarkets are killing the small town centres of Britain and why George Galloway went on Celebrity Big Brother destroying any political credibility he may have had in the blink of a cat's eye.Bitingly funny, poignant, sharply observed and very much of the moment, this is Mark Steel at his brilliantly intelligent best.


About the Author

Mark Steel is a writer, presenter and comedian. His TV and radio series include The Mark Steel Solution, The Mark Steel Revolution and The Mark Steel Lectures. He writes a weekly column for the Independent newspaper and is a regular on Radio 4's Loose Ends and The News Quiz. He lives in London.
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What's Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion
84% buy the item featured on this page:
What's Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion 4.2 out of 5 stars (12)
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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
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 (7)
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 (3)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Laughter Therapy for Middle-aged Lefties, 1 Sep 2008
By J. Goddard "Jim Goddard" (Shipley) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I've read a couple of Mark Steel's other books, so I kind of knew what to expect. However, this has more depth and poignancy. That'll be due to age, I reckon (both his and mine).

His humour doesn't always work for me, but there is enough here to more than satisfy. Besides, I like it that his humour has a point to it and that, while he sometimes picks easy targets, he's never nasty or vicious. What I most liked was the sense of truth in his telling of how confusing things have become as he has got older. Also, the story of his marriage breakdown is told, as another reviewer mentions, withough bitterness and with due regard to privacy. Really not sure what one of the other reviewers means about him being 'grumpy'. Quite the opposite, I'd have said. Even when he is getting hacked off with the SWP, you can see there's more affection there than anything else.

Because of the honesty about the political changes he's seen, the book has contemporary relevance. Anyone who has had any experience of the left these past twenty years or so (and I'm on the pink, tepid, Labour Party edge of the left) will instantly get where he's coming from. Sometimes it helps to laugh, so long as you don't get cynical.

I loved it and would recommend it to anyone.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The personal is political, 5 Aug 2008
By M. McCann "rednotdead1976" (N Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Having read and devoured "Vive La Revolution", "Reasons to be Cheerful" and "It's Not a Runner Bean", I preordered this book and was really glad to get it earlier than expected. I recieved it at 4pm on the Thursday and by bedtime that night had finished 3/4 of it and completed the rest after work the next day. This has been my experience of all Mark Steel's books- they mix humour and great writing with political views that I happen to share and make for a book that you just want to read right through to the end. This is not a book to read in public, unless you don't mind people looking at you strangely when you keep laughing out loud! Mark also articulates the difficulties make of us have on the left with the manner certain things have been done, so it is good to see we are not on our own. I fully recommend this book- it is almost enough for me to start buying the Independent again on Wednesdays!
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Disillusionment was never so uplifting, 31 Aug 2008
By Vp Campbell (Leicestershire, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Mark Steel stands out in modern Britain as one of the consistent and committed unreconstructed socialists in public life, although he's much funnier than most.

This book is more melancholy though as he discusses the horrors of modern society (how the view that nothing is worth doing unless someone can make a profit out of it has become so dominant in the UK) in the context of the breakdown of two of his long term relationships- one the woman he had kids with, the other the Socialist Workers Party.

It's amazing that he can discuss the breakup of his long term relationship without ever really giving away the specifics, or with recriminating comments about his ex-partner, and yet at the same time articulating the confusion, hurt and despait such a break-up can lead to (and make some good jokes along the way).

The stuff about the SWP is harder to take as it takes him the whole book to realise that the SWP are a bunch of pointless, ineffectual idiots, whose only achievement seems to have been to helped reduce socialist principles in the UK to a laughing stock. At least he's realised this by the end.

As ever, like in his columns for The Independent, Steel is able with razor-sharp humour, logic and insight to pinpoint the absurdities of the modern age. His excoriation of how the logic of capitalist 'competition' and 'choice' have led to more and more homogeneity on the high street- in every town and city in Britain there's nothing but a sea of chain stores, many of which are global chains too- is particularly incisive.

Despite the rather gloomy tone throughout, Steel's sense of humour in spite of everything, and continued hope for the future wins through in the end.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Relationship breakdowns and the Socialist Worker's Party. Quite funny.
A whole book in which a self-confessed middle-aged man compares his own relationship break-up with the gradual demise of the Socialist Worker's Party should, by definition, be... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mr. Stuart Bruce

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the funniest guys in the UK
This hilarious book exactly mirrored my life at the time of reading - a disillusionment with marriage and the organised left (despite having faith in both). Read more
Published 8 months ago by Paul Wellings

5.0 out of 5 stars a beautiful book
Mark Steel has written a really great book, I found it poignant and compulsive reading. More serious and personal than some of his previous works, but still with some huge laugh... Read more
Published 10 months ago by West London woman

5.0 out of 5 stars On life & the Left after 40.
Left-wing comedian Mark Steel, now in his 40s, has written an honest, funny and moving book about his general bafflement with the political situation under New Labour and the... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Jazzrook

5.0 out of 5 stars refreshingly hopeful
I absolutely loved this book- as with most of mark steel's meanderings. He is brutally honest and still creates a sense of hope which makes such a marked change to the fashionably... Read more
Published 12 months ago by shellyvortex

1.0 out of 5 stars Yes what is going on
What's going on by Mark Steel begs the question "Yes what is
going on?" I purchased this book after hearing him on radio
being very funny but Oh dear the paperback... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Ed Bevan

2.0 out of 5 stars Chronicles of a grumpy old man !
I found this book very tedious and dull . The accounts of the break down of Steel's toxic marriage are interspersed with dull rants against the usual targets . Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. Bourke

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Blood On The Tracks' meets Paul Foot's 'The Vote'

Another sublime tome from Mr. Steel. I had to actively restrain myself from reading it too quickly, but I still polished it off in less than a week such was the addictive... Read more
Published 15 months ago by DOA UK

4.0 out of 5 stars Steel Delivers again
Like the reviewer below, I ploughed through this book in no time. Insightful as always, and never dull. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Mr. Julian W. Gibson

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