The Timewaster Letters Robin Cooper

The Timewaster Letters (Paperback) Robin Cooper (Mr); resident of Brondesbury Villas, London, spoon collector, colour inventor, artist and poet is a dreamer - a visionary if you will. His days are spent writing to Ikea, The Society of Existential Analysts, Dorling Kindersley and the Liberal Party with ideas for new logos, furniture designs, children's novels etc. The problem is that he has a tin ear for prose, a tin eye for a good design (indeed no redeeming artistic abilities at all) and what can only be described as a "fevered imagination".

Robin Cooper is, in fact, Robert Popper, creator of the truly wonderful comedy series Look Around You (amongst other things) and his distinctive brand of humour is evident here. The Timewaster Letters is, of course, no more than the prank phonecall committed to paper ("Is your fridge running? Yes? Well you'd better chase after it then!"), a more developed form of knocking on someone's door and running away, and many will consider it childish, peurile and a cheap laugh at best. Indeed it's a little hit or miss - sometimes the humour IS just silly and often the target of Mr Cooper's correspondances simply reply with a brief, polite request to stop writing to them. Overall it's not unlike David Thorne's The Internet is a Playground (which Timewaster predates by quite a few years).

However, many of the episodes ARE funny - very funny - (at least to me) and a few had me literally crying with laughter (much to the irritation of my wife - don't read it on a train).

So, do be careful before buying this as it's very much a matter of taste.


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