Tough Crowd - Graham Linehan

[Greenfairy2468]

I pre ordered this book ages ago, just got an email from Amazon saying my order is delayed and they'll let me know when they'll despatch it.

Had this happened to anyone else? Is the publication delayed or have the not got enough??

Lovely review in the Irish Independent

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/graham-linehan-makes-shift-from-sitcom-writer-to-author-seamlessly-with-his-memoir-tough-crowd/a1958503082.html

It has been archived.

Then there's this one from someone who's so busy still trying to 'beeee kiiind' and an ally, that they nearly forget to review the book

https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-opinion/opinion-thoughts-cancelled-irish-comics-27952824

Just picked up my copy today

Number 10 on the Sunday Times Bestseller List!

Congratulations, Graham.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2023.10.28-235046/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-bestsellers-list-book-sales-chart-2023-wtf0fg8v7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2023.10.28-235046/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-bestsellers-list-book-sales-chart-2023-wtf0fg8v7

Excellent news,

Simon Edge (Glinner's publisher) has also said, the total numbers on the Times bestseller list don't include direct sales from the publisher's website.

Along with the standing ovation he got, it's not been a bad week for Glinner. Well deserved! 😀

I've just finished this book, and I was deeply, deeply moved by it. It's a beautifully impassioned, funny, insightful biography. And a brilliant writing guide. It is a generous gift to baby writers everywhere (the ones with any sense).

Your daughter will be very proud of you one day @Glinner when she realises how her rights, dignity, and needs were undermined by a small group of deeply unhappy people - and how her dad stood up and was counted, at great cost.

I look forward to the day your biog makes it to the big screen, Trumbo style, because I believe it will. You and Kellie Jay are an inspiration to many. (And many more who don't quite know it yet.)

I pre-ordered and received my signed copy earlier this month but I decided to buy the audiobook via Apple Books and haven’t been disappointed - Graham reads the book really well and it feels like he’s recounting his life as part of a chat with listener. I’m listening to it as I soak in my morning bath and finding it really enjoyable.

I particularly enjoyed his descriptions of life as a teenager in 80s/90s Ireland, it’s so evocative that it really brings back the memories for me.

The audio-book is currently number 63 on the overall bestsellers list on audible. And remains at the top spot in Politics and Activism. I'm sure we can look forward to the next article from Popbitch article, with news that he's only sold 2 audible copies.😉

Perhaps dimly aware that they can no longer ignore a bestselling book by one of the world's most successful tv comedy scriptwriters, the Guardian has finally run a review of the book - which, naturally, is typically small-minded, humourless and spiteful. How vile these people are.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/01/tough-crowd-by-graham-linehan-review-all-joking-aside

I'm amazed and pleased to hear that it's being stocked in Waterstones. My local Waterstones is notorious for not stocking books that its young blue-haired staff don't approve of.

The more he is abused for his opinions, the more entrenched and maniacal those opinions seem to become. Here, as on his Twitter page, he makes a show of misgendering trans men and women, and says he is stunned at his “inability to make people care about the daylight theft of women’s rights, or the greatest safeguarding scandal since Rotherham, or the greatest medical scandal since thalidomide”.

None of those three things sound 'maniacal' to me. They sound fuckling serious, which they are. Bit surprised at the Graun doubling down like this, after having shown a bit of a more nuanced position before. Still, fuck 'em.

BTW I had a look in my local Waterstones the other day. Confusingly, Biography seems to be split in two separate areas in the shop. Anyway, I couldn't see it, so asked, and yes, it was there, I just hadn't spotted it.

Mine arrived during the week. I need to get stuck in now. I can’t wait.

Unpleasant as bad reviews are for an author, they may actually help sales. A clutch of 'everyone loves it' array of 5 star gushing reviews (which he already has, from well known public figures) is fine, but the pitch perfect combination is a few vicious, mean-spirited reviews like this one added into the mix to prick up people's ears.

Everyone loves a good old stooshie.

https://guardianbookshop.com/tough-crowd-9781785633065

I see the Guardian are happy to profit from his 'entrenched and maniacal' views, too.

None of those three things sound 'maniacal' to me. They sound fuckling serious, which they are. Bit surprised at the Graun doubling down like this, after having shown a bit of a more nuanced position before. Still, fuck 'em.

I'd rather be a maniac fighting for justice than a smug, posturing Guardian writer sneering at people with a more highly-developed sense of decency and moral compass than I possess.

Simon Edge has a thread pointing out that the reviewer "chooses to repeat her paper's misleading claim that @glinner received a police warning, linking to the story the Guardian published to that effect in October 2018."

https://twitter.com/simonjedge/status/1719723456701603847

How weird that the Guardian bothered to review a book that didn't sell / did sell but all to the same 6 far right funded unfuckable women.

Please Glinner sue the Guardian for defamation.

So, is the Guardian saying they don't care if children are sterilised and women's rights and children's safeguarding dismantled, as long as no-one gets 'misgendered' then? Note made....

I just read that review, @RoyalCorgi , and couldn't agree more. At least explain what Linehan's argument is, rather than just the personal attacks on someone the reviewer dismisses as unhinged. For example, there is no context to him using social media when recovering from cancer surgery. It's just written to make him sound weird.

I already have it from Eye Books. But I do want to buy another copy as a present.

Oh The Guardian.....how tediously predictable of you.
You'll be telling us your made up personal pronouns next....
(Yawns....)

lol you wouldn’t understand The Guardisn - it’s called integrity

as usual they behave as if misgendering was the worst crime in the history of the universe instead of actually trying to rebut his arguments

I was surprised by that Belfast Live review. It was so cringing and buck-passing that I thought it had been written by some underconfident teenage unknown struggling to make their way in the arts/media world. Then I scrolled back to the top to see it had been written by Rigsy, a well established DJ and radio personality here who I would have thought was old enough to know his own mind and not come up with this mealy mouthed, handwringing "Don't hate me pleeeease" stuff. Either review it or don't review it but don't tiptoe about.

The reviewer calls Linehan's activism, sorry, "activism" (as if it doesn't deserve that term), "a peculiar and self defeating obsession".
No evidence to support that claim, just completely dismissive.

*Hmm that was a bit negative of me. I should add that I think Rigsy is normally entertaining and good at his job, and I have also met him some time ago through work (my work not his- completely unrelated to his work) and he was very straightforward and decent. But that review was mince. Which was uncharacteristic and therefore disappointing.