John O'Farrell
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John O'Farrell (born March 27, 1962) is a British author, broadcaster and comedy script writer.
O'Farrell has written six books - Things Can Only Get Better: Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter, 1979-1997 (published 1998), The Best a Man Can Get (2000), Global Village Idiot (2001), This Is Your Life (2002) I Blame the Scapegoats (2003) and May Contain Nuts (2005).
His debut was a factual account of his (torrid) time supporting Labour during their wilderness years, and became a number one bestseller. The Best a Man Can Get, This Is Your Life and May Contain Nuts are comic novels that have been compared to the work of Nick Hornby. His novels have been translated into around twenty languages.
Global Village Idiot and I Blame the Scapegoats are collections of his pieces for The Independent and The Guardian. O'Farrell's column, which he wrote from 1999 to 2005, usually took a humorous or satirical look at a major event in British or world politics of the previous week. His views are somewhat left-of-centre and though a member of the Labour Party, O'Farrell has been a consistent critic of his party's policy in Iraq.
O'Farrell previously wrote for comedy television and radio shows with co-writer Mark Burton. Early roles include many years writing for Spitting Image (where he is credited for having had the idea of making John Major permanantly grey) and the non-spontaneous parts of Have I Got News For You, later becoming a guest himself. He co-wrote many of the "Head to Heads" for Smith and Jones, worked on Murder Most Horrid and is also credited for additional material in the Nick Park comedy Chicken Run. Less successfully, he also co-wrote the BBC1 sitcom The Peter Principle. He has also been employed by Chancellor Gordon Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair on occasion as a joke writer. As a result, O'Farrell was lampooned in Private Eye - edited by O'Farrell's former colleague, Ian Hislop.
O'Farrell is still politically active, having successfully campaigned for a new state secondary school in his part of South London, the Lambeth Academy, where he is now chair of governors. He stood as a no-hope Labour candidate in the 2001 General Election in his home town of Maidenhead, which was the subject of the BBC documentary Losing My Maidenhead. During the 2005 general election his comic emails to Labour Party members raised hundreds of thousands of pounds. O'Farrell insists he has no serious political ambitions and that he will not be standing anywhere again. He now regularly appears on British television on such programmes as Grumpy Old Men, Question Time and Have I Got News For You.
In September 2006 O'Farrell launched a news satire website NewsBiscuit. [1]
[edit] Works
- May Contain Nuts (May 2, 2005) (2005, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-60608-7)
- I Blame the Scapegoats (2003) (2004, Black Swan, ISBN 0-552-77194-5) (2003, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-60674-5)
- This Is Your Life (2002) (2004, Grove Press, ISBN 0-8021-4134-X) (2003, Black Swan, ISBN 0-552-99849-4) (2002, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-60098-4)
- Global Village Idiot (2001) (2004, Grove Press, ISBN 0-8021-4038-6) (2002, Corgi, ISBN 0-552-99964-4) (2001, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-60293-6)
- The Best a Man Can Get (2000) (2002, Broadway Books, ISBN 0-7679-0714-0) (2001, Black Swan, ISBN 0-552-99844-3) (2001, Broadway Books, ISBN 0-7679-0713-2) (2000, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-60084-4)
- Things Can Only Get Better: Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter, 1979-1997 (1998) (1998, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-41059-X) (1999, Black Swan, ISBN 0-552-99803-6)
