This Christmas I was on the Good List again (don’t ask me how) and one of the gifts Santa Brought me was This Mitchell & Webb Book.

This Mitchell & Webb Book

It’s a heavy tome and I was expecting it to provide accompaniment to my private times (ahem, I keep my books in the en-suite smallest room) for a few weeks. Here’s my first and biggest problem with the book… after a few interesting and funny pages, the book descends into an over-designed, overly-padded comedy book.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love comedy. I also love pictures and appreciate good design. I even love comic strip-type work and in my younger days I dabbled with it myself.  If anyone has a copy of my old student mag, it’s probably worth … oooh, several pennies now.

 But… when I’m presented with a hardcover book I expect it to last me more than 6 days of visits to the loo.  This book has some really funny comedy moments including the poster above, which made me chuckle for hours – I’m thinking of putting it on the notice board at work.  However, the last book I found so disjointed was something to do with The Young Ones when I was about 14.

Mitchell & Webb are funny. I love their radio stuff; their TV work’s entertaining and even their appearances on umpteen panel shows are amusing enough – I just feel that this book was thrown together under a contractual agreement involving a decent advance payment and a tight deadline to make sure it was ready in time for the pre-Christmas market.

Saying that, it’s not bad. Borrow a copy from a friend. Borrow mine if you want. It’s good enough for me to tell you that I want it back, but not so good that I’d demand that you buy your own. You can though, here:

Tell ‘em Phill sent you.

p.s. you can follow David Mitchell on twitter: @RealDMitchell – and read more from both of the chaps on MySpace.