A Time Before Genesis

by Les Dawson

179 pages, Hardcover

Published March 13, 1986

About the author

Les Dawson (2 February 1931 – 10 June 1993) was a popular English comedian, remembered for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.

Raised in the Collyhurst district of Manchester, Dawson began his entertainment career as a pianist in a Parisian brothel (according to his entertaining but factually unreliable autobiography). As a club pianist ("I finally heard some applause from a bald man and said 'thank you for clapping me' and he said 'I'm not clapping - I'm slapping me head to keep awake'"), he was to find that he got laughs by playing wrong notes and complaining to the audience. He made his television debut on the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and became a prominent comic on British television for the rest of his life.

Dawson wrote many novels but was always regarded solely as an entertainer in the public imagination, and this saddened him. He told his second wife, Tracey, "Always remind them - I was a writer too".

Having broken his jaw in a boxing match, Dawson was able to pull grotesque faces by pulling his jaw over his upper lip. This incident is described in the first volume of Dawson's autobiography A Clown Too Many.

Reviews

[David Robert Bloomer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good luck getting a copy of this one. If you do, don't imagine that it is full of mother in law jokes or in fact, any jokes. It's a very odd book considering the Les Dawson we know from his television career. Full of conspiracy theories and a very alternative take on the world. As I say it may be hard to get a copy of it, as it is rare. If you do manage to get a copy under £50, go for it.
The plot is set in 1995, 9 years after the release of the book, and involves dark conspiracies that are in place leading the world in anarchy. To say too much more would spoil your enjoyment of the book. I have a signed copy which Les Dawson put, in memory of good taste. This book definitely dips into bad taste with a take on religion akin to David Icke.

[Dave Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Distinctly odd. Worth reading, but ... odd. Don't expect comedy!
The majority of the story is a religious primal good versus evil parable - with the deeds of the evil being gruesomely described, and the good needing to be almost as brutal in order to defeat them. The background draws in everything from space aliens to mystical forces to vampirism to Satanic cults to the JFK assassination to ley lines to Nazis ...
Then we have "the final confrontation" which is over in a twinkling, and followed by an aftermath in which humanity rises and falls once again, and then a coda that's like 2001 meets Planet of the Apes.