|
menu
 "A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman
"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian
"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times
"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post
"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go
"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times
"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist
"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly
"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian
"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review
"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT
"A joy."
- Financial Times
"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman
"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald
"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust
"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM
"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times
"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ
"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List
"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age
"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph
"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out
"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters
"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post
"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun
"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail
"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner
"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian
"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist
"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald
"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald
"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading
"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner
"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times
"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
 "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle
"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm
"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser
"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press
"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald
"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune
 "Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus
"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut
"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK
|
|
The River Cafe Quiz
Independent on Sunday, July 2003
THERE is no reason why anyone sane should care what the technical name for the dot on the letter “i” is, or who the US Secretary of State during the Cuban missile crisis was, or where Tess of the D’Urbervilles was when she was apprehended by the police. Tonight, however, a room full of wealthy, famous and powerful people – leavened with a token smattering of my fellow representatives of the impecunious, obscure and irrelevant – care about these, and dozens more equally trifling matters, very deeply. It’s the River Cafe Quiz, the one everybody wants to win. “Come on, come on,” begins the quizmaster, Jeremy Paxman, as if corralling a herd of restive sheep, or an especially obstinate cabinet minister. “Or we’ll be here all night.”
In the last couple of years, there has been a growing trend among London’s media for these intellectual equivalents of Fight Club. The River Cafe quiz is a long-standing annual charitable fixture, which I’ve arrived at for the first time via a separate quiz league, hosted at the Atlantic Bar a couple of years back by British television’s second most famous Jeremy, Beadle (since you ask – and everybody does – in person Beadle is the polar opposite of his popular reputation, which is to say he’s clever, funny, and enormously likeable). For the Atlantic quizzes, I was part of the Time Out team. We won the second of Beadle’s three four-part quiz marathons, which was the only one to be sponsored – every member of our team scored a bespoke suit from Dunhill. None of the other teams ever forgave us, and many were the insults, glares and angrily flung bread rolls directed at us whenever we argued about the marking in subsequent quizzes.
Our team for the River Cafe contains four veterans of that victorious side: programme-maker Philippa Walker, Times columnist and film-maker Jonathan Meades, myself, and my mate Martin who knows everything (to be honest, my abiding memory of our triumph at the Atlantic is of Meades and my mate Martin hunched over the answer sheets muttering to each other, while the rest of us occasionally said “Sure, guys, whatever, sounds great”). Also on board are the director Sheree Folkson, and Alan Yentob, both of whom me and my mate Martin have previously competed alongside at a school fundraiser. That evening, we won by such a colossal margin that we could have gone home halfway through, and none of the other teams would have got near us. Tonight at the River Cafe, I sense, is going to be rather more difficult: less than a bread roll toss from where I’m sitting are Nick Hornby, Robert Harris, John Mortimer, Stephen Fry, two national newspaper editors, and sufficient star columnists that the thought vaguely occurs that if I’d stayed home and arranged to have the place firebombed, the resulting round of promotions would have left me with at least a photo byline on an op-ed page on one of the less fashionable days of the week. Tuesday, perhaps.
The 120 questions asked of us over eight rounds tonight are, as these things should be, a mixture of the forehead-knottingly highbrow and the desperately trivial. We start quite brightly, with 13 out of 15 in the opening round about US-UK relations, but as our hopes of victory recede over the course of the evening, we are forced to wring what consolation we can from the fact that we (okay, Meades and my mate Martin) know who invented nylon, and who was the first child born to English immigrants to the New World, but we can’t differentiate between five brands of biscuit, or name Bob the Builder’s digger and cement mixer. These questions, we choose to believe, are simply beneath us – which is not to say that we refuse the points for knowing Lady Penelope’s license plate number (FAB 1) or the identity of the only character who never won on “Wacky Races” (Dick Dastardly). Frustratingly, from a personal perspective, there’s not enough of the arcane historical nonsense which Beadle favours, and for which I have an abundant but otherwise useless facility, but I contribute slightly by naming the Falklands task force commander (Admiral Sandy Woodward), identifying the Italian national anthem (though none of us, shamefully, get the South African or Welsh one), and knowing who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of World War One (first rule of quizzes: if in doubt, say “Winston Churchill”).
Paxman hosts with the amused impatience he displays on “University Challenge”, only lasping into “Newsnight” Witchfinder-General mode once, near the end, when one team presses their alternative answer to a question that little bit too hard. “That’s absolutely idiotic,” he snorts. “You should be hung off Hammersmith Bridge for that.” The night is finally carried by the team including Mortimer, Hornby, and Harris, who finish with 120 points, an intimidating margin ahead of our mid-table, but respectable, 93. It would be churlish to point out that this team includes both the brother and the husband of the question-setter, Gill Hornby, but as this is exactly what the entire restaurant points out rather loudly when the result is announced, it would be unprofessional not to report it. Not, of course, that we’re bitter. “Aw, they say that every year,” says Hornby, when we offer our congratulations on our way out.
PRINT PAGE | BACK TO TOP
|
|
