Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Charlie Brooker

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Charlie Brooker

Any Brooker fans out there care to review this? English peasant 23:10, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

• Charlie Brooker himself said (on Twitter): "@BethBreeze I love reading formulaic slaggings which culminate in saying I've become something I would've slated, written by children."

Ouch. He said it on 2.05pm on May 29th, if you want to look it up. Charlie's Twitter Sir Padddy5 CUN VFH 12:41, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

• I think this article breaks at least two of The Big Five is that it reads like a personal attack on Brooker, and is without satire or wit. The biographical information is factually correct, but with the words shit or crappy put in front of specific details. I am a fan of Brooker and do believe that You Have Been Watching is weak but merely listing what he's done and then putting that they're crap isn't exactly stretching to achieve anything like satire. Buddhafella 18:26, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

• Response - It amuses me that you claim to be a Brooker fan, yet claim that this article is without satire or wit. I have specifically written the article in the style of a typical Brooker hatchet job and have deliberately used numerous Brookerisms (check the quoted expert source, its Brooker himself). Your claim that I put the words "shit or crappy... in front of specific details" is demonstrably false, the only uses of "shit" in the whole biography are the use of "shitstorm" which is a common Brookerism, "annoying shit stirrer" to describe Julie Birchill and "toxic shitstack" to describe Reading. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Brooker's Screenburn column, the Grauniad website and the pitiful standard of the below the line comments secreted by his hoard of witless sycophants, hence your inability to recognise the satirical fanboy comments in the article, although perhaps you are one of those fanboys that can't bear to see yourself and your hero satirised. For the record I'm a big Brooker fan, I have been reading his work in the Guardian since he started writing in G2 a decade ago and believe that Newswipe was excellent (BBC broadcasting at its finest), but if you can only satirise stuff you don't like then you are not much of a comic. I would also politely suggest that you read Uncyclopedia:No personal attacks, as your claim that the Brooker article violates it looks like inaccurate wikilawyering, especially given the usual standard of biographies on this website. English peasant 17:03, June 12, 2010 (UTC)
• Buddhafella, you are wrong, by which I mean, I second the sentiments of the above poster. IronLung 05:54, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

OK everyone, the discussion on this ends now. If you want to talk about this do it in the forum or on a talk page; this is not the place for it. Now back down the mine with the lot of you. --ChiefjusticePS3 08:13, June 16, 2010 (UTC)

• Perhaps if someone actually did the review, the discussion would die down a bit. I've got a good mind to do it myself. English peasant 21:27, June 16, 2010 (UTC)

Now now, a reviewer will be along soon, and if they haven't turned up by this time tomorrow, mention it on my talk page and I'll put on the ol' peeing boots and do it myself. --ChiefjusticePS3 21:29, June 16, 2010 (UTC)

Right, I've got this, 24 hours. --ChiefjusticePS3 07:55, June 19, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	7	Right, you have taken this one in a very interesting direction and it is only the second time I've seen someone have a stab at this particular type of article. My enduring feeling is that you are successful in doing what you are trying to do but in doing so you make the article far less accommodating than it could be. Permit me to expand, consider the very start of your article, you immediately state exactly what the intended aim of the article is and that is exactly what you intend to do as you are satirising his work, but you do it to such an extent that in some places I began to lose sight of the point you were making. Consider it in this way if I say "Darth Vader was a rather mean chap who in his utter meanness brought on by a childhood devoid of pokemon and freedom which he experienced on the planet of Tatooine" then by the time I finish complaining and elaborating on the character it is a slight struggle to remember what point you were making initially. With what you are doing this issue is expanded to cover the whole article, the whole thing comes across as something of a tirade rather than a review and it is important for you to distinguish between the two. The reason your article sounds more like a tirade is because much of the criticism is drawn from a single point or isn't backed up at all, consider "He has only 3 jokes which he recycles endlessly in pessimistic diatribes which are then passed off as gritty satirical humour." It's fine as a point but you need to say something to quantify it. This is the reason that your article has seemed as it has to some of the persons commenting above, for it to sound less like a string of insults coupled together losely you need to present some evidence for most, if not all of your points. Now in the above instance I'm not suggesting that you say "... and these jokes go like this" I'm simply suggesting that you investigate a way to demonstrate your point later, perhaps by repeating a couple of your jokes or by coming to a biased conclusion twice. The issue you face in writing in this style is that if it is not done properly the article sounds more like a bundle of insults, and while my feeling on reading your article was that it isn't a personal attack and is a very good start at an appropriate satire, but it is easy to lose sight of this at times. My other piece of advice would be to try and reserve the ultimate opinion to the very end, you rarely see reviews of poor films, plays or books that start with "This book was a revelation, in that I didn't think anyone could write such a steaming pile of shit without talent removal surgery" as it doesn't leave anything else to say in the review; for this reason I would suggest that you conclude by saying outright that he is a gobshite and strongly suggest it all the way through, listing the reasons why before ultimately saying "All these reasons put together lead me to conclude that Charlie Brooker is a first class gobshite". Beyond this I commend you for doing reasonably well with this one, as I say above try to include more emphasis on the review style of the article. I would strongly suggest you take a look at this article which does a similar thing to you, my advice would be that you take a look at what the author of that one does to get his point across and try and compare how the way of bringing the humour to the reader works in your respective articles. I was interested to see the comments section which I rather enjoyed, my only suggestion is that you try and tie a couple more jokes from within the article to the comments, highlighting specific comments, or perhaps just using the favoured youtube trick and simply quoting what everyone has just seen/read back in a comment, otherwise I thought it made for a good addition to what you had already done.
Concept:	7	I like how you have made the concept your own by including some original ideas to compliment the text but I would encourage you to take a second look at a couple of aspects of your text. I would especially encourage you to pay more attention to the idea that it is supposedly the person reviewing himself, but I never got that impression from the text, perhaps this was your intention but it didn't sit too well with me as a reader. My advice from how I read this one would be to attempt to bring the narrative a bit closer to the person who is supposedly writing, the style is fine but my feeling is that something in the text, be it footnotes or some other means that suggest the person writing is also the subject. The reason I am making such a point of this is that your article sounds far more like the Ben Croshaw one linked above which is supposed to be someone criticising someone in that persons signature style whereas yours is supposed to be the person being criticised, my feeling is simply that there should be more than a single defining characteristic that separates the two. My complaint here is somewhat minor but for some may prove to be problematic especially as the idea that he is reviewing himself is such a prominent one, I leave a decision on the most pertinent course of action to you.
Prose and formatting:	9	Spelling and grammar are near without fault and for this alone you are to be commended. My only recommendation on this accordingly is that you keep up the good work and ensure you proofread carefully after making any major changes and, should you desire a second opinion the good people at UN:PS are generally always happy to help out. The formatting is generally excellent too, everything fits in neatly and the article looks good. The only minor quibble that I have is that you might want to consider moving the image of Brooker down a bit to avoid having everything either right up at the bottom or with the comments at the bottom. Besides that you may want to consider adding a bit more gloss to the comments section, and it may be worth asking a coding wizard like PuppyOnTheRadio or Spang for advice and help if that is a route you would be interested in following. As I said only minor issues here, and some generally sterling work.
Images:	9	Good here, my main piece of advice would be that you make sure that the image caption is not neglected if you make significant changes to the article, I would also encourage you to make more of the news website idea as I mentioned above and it may be possible to incorporate some changes there.
Miscellaneous:	7	My overall grade of the article.
Final Score:	39	A very solid piece of work here, you write well and the jokes are enjoyable, the main thing that I would say that you need to focus on is remedying the problems with your style, my feeling is that this will be relatively easy for you to do and I would encourage you to see opinions such as the ones mentioned above this review as indicators of how others will view your article, consider going to these people and asking them if your changes make the article appeal to them more. My advice would be to try and reconcile the direction you want to go with the article with the reviewing style you have set for yourself, once you do this I feel that the humour will be vastly improved. If you have any questions or comments for me then feel free to leave them on my talk page. Finally my apologies for the long wait you have had for this review, we do endeavour to avoid it but occasionally it does happen. In future if you have been waiting for over two weeks then bring it to my attention and I will get it sorted out for you. Good luck making any changes.
Reviewer:	--ChiefjusticePS3 20:40, June 19, 2010 (UTC)