GIRO PLAYBOY

by Michael Smith

An utterly charming miniature picaresque and a portrait of a life blissfully unmoored, "The Giro Playboy" is a 21st-century beat classic in the making. "The Giro Playboy" recounts the (mis)adventures of a delusional drifter and his wanderings from the north-east to London (where the streets are paved with gold), and on to Brighton and the badlands of Essex. Along the way, he falls in love, drinks a lot of beer, eats too many sweets, ponders the meaning of life on the dole, and gets admitted to hospital for a painful condition - all the time measuring his life in cigarettes.

Genres: Fiction, Humor

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Michael Smith (born 1976) is an English writer, broadcaster and film-maker.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searching for that defining thing that turns writing into literature, that makes it universal, and relevant and gives it a lifespan of at least a few hundred years turned out to be a fruitless task for me. I found a definition from someone else that seemed to satisfy me before I could find it for myself. Laura Miller, in an article for The Guardian, ruminated on how contemporary novelists struggle to fit that great socio-technological development of the late Twentieth Century/early 21st Century - the Internet - into contemporary fiction. Miller notes that authors, scared away from "frivolous nows" retreated into history. "Frivolous nows" versus "the timeless " - that seemed to encapsulate it for me. However, having confined myself almost exclusively to 19th and early to mid 20th century literature - the potentially frivolous nows of the books I have read over the last 2 or 3 years would go unnoticed as the novels, even those set in the present, are in fact set in my distant past. The real challenge it seems is to incorporate the frivolous and make it timeless. Smith has done this almost outrageously perfectly. How better to encapsulate the life of the lonely drifter, the single man with no purpose, no meaning, few real friends than this:

The moon was in Scorpio
and I was in Tesco
1 frozen pizza
1 pint of milk
1 Terry's Orange
was the mystic result

Meals for 1, long lonely walks filled with thoughts about the buildings around him, what they signify about society, about social trends - gentrification - the direction of his life, should he be satisfied with the ignomony of drinking and drugging himself into a stupor to keep his purity, to not conform, AT ALL, to any stereotype - be it the conventional family man, the career orientated, or the artistic Shoreditch type (for whom he reserves the most of his contempt ) - to keep his purity by hanging out with those that the rest of society - all of society, from the conformist non conformist Shoreditchers to the 9 to 5 middle of the road suburban clones, to the Cityboys - considers to be complete lowlife losers - Glue sniffers, alcoholics that spend their days in dire pubs that stink of piss and smoke, fellow "Giro Playboys" who dream of being rockstars for one drug and alcohol fueled evening before inevitably signing on the next day. Or should he break lose, carve himself his own niche, retain his purity whilst earning his own living.

I discovered Michael Smith on BBC4, flicking through the channels late one night his voice captivated me. His soft North Eastern lilt, his sereneness and calmness as he ambled through the streets of Newcastle ruminating on urban decay, broken New Labour promises, regeneration that never materialised, or did so in the most superficial of ways; his disgust at the idea of rebranding the area as "Newcastle-Gateshead" casting aside thousands of years of organic history at the stroke of a PR guru's pen.

What does he stand for though?

He's found his niche. He's got this epic, original masterpiece published, he makes interesting, almost artistic, documentaries for the BBC. But what is he? Where does he fit? The answer is probably that he doesn't fit and he knows it, he likes it like that. He is now in the perfect position of being able to stand on his pulpit castigating whole sections of society for their values or lack of. And now he is sober (presumably), making his own living, he is in the perfect spot - there is no obvious come back to him. No one can tell him to sober up, no one can tell him to get a job. A society full of Michael Smiths wouldn't function as we know it, but it would be a society that searches for the truth, that doesn't bullshit, that isn't phoney - on to the Catcher in the Rye I go, logically, from this modern day masterpiece.

[Ian Mapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an odd little book. Quite unlike anything I've read before in its design/layout. Subject matter not wholly dissimilar to Geoff Dyer's Colour of memory.

The design - pamphlet sized book, made smaller with text on only half the pages and whole pages given up to doodles/drawing. The artwork brings plenty to the sum of the whole. You possibly wouldnt understand "Shitclaw" unless you saw the accompanying picture. Then you'll wish you hadn't.

The subject matter... a young "waster" doing nothing with his life and moving through life on the dole, in poor housing, taking drugs, drinking booze, ticking off his life through the consumption of cigarettes. He moves from Brighton to East London to the "old country" of his birth, Hartlepool before finally to Essex. He mixes with the drop outs of society. He becomes a flaneur - walking around the cities to simply pass time.

The writing/prose is superb. Often poetic. Easy to read. The characters - especially those he meets in the pub - are fascinating. I've met similar, but never quite this OTT. Have they been exaggerated for the book. Strangely, I think not. A nice commentary on gentrification and homogenisation.

Not without its faults. The sexism grates. Written in the late 90s/ early 2000s, you cant even say its "of its time". Would expect better from an obviously cultured and intelligent man.

The book is good enough by itself but with a bit of research, it opens doors to more cultural entertainment possibilities.

The author is elusive. I have found a little about him - not least, his follow up book mentioned on the jacket of this one "the birds" was never printed. He did a couple of documentaries on BBC4 in the late noughties. Alas, iPlayer does not have them but the six episodes of Citizen Smith have three minute teasers on YouTube. The search for England looks right up my street and hearing the man talk brings life to the book.

All I can find of him now is that he appears to be running a pub - Marina Fountain, near Hastings. It looks lovely.

The reviews have also led me to Tom Hodgkinson and Idler Magazine. Seems like an entire movement dedicated to my life mantra. Much work to do there.

An elusive writer/broadcaster to watch out for.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I half liked this book and was half annoyed by it. I loved the chapters on the desolation of Brighton in winter and the optimism of east London in spring, the descriptions of Hackney moving from inner city blight to party place to hipster hang out in the early noughties and then the contrast with the old country i.e. the north, returning home where nothing is difficult but nothing is interesting (although as a Hartlepuddlian native, I'd've thought that Smith would know the monkey hanger story is a myth, a music hall number).

What I found tedious were the repetitive stories of drink and drugs and unpleasantness in pub toilet, both in Hartlepool and Whitechapel, with many references to the “birds” the protagonist has “shagged”. Yawn, I think this stuff got old in the '90s. At one point he says that women's brains are “wired wrongly”, which I presume means that a woman didn't act, react or behave as he wanted her to. There is a lot about pub characters, i.e. the inveterate alcoholics who beat their wives, and much revelling in excess as a lifestyle choice because it's not "bourgeois" or "suburban".

The narrator is kind of person who moans that all the eccentrics have left the east end and it's all so corporate now. I’m not desperate to hang out with the likes of “Sweaty Grandad” or Mad Mick, the paedophile or Old Tom who threatens to rape the barmaid. Gimme a Pret a Manger any day.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Penniless modern-day Prufrock drifts, offers observations on slacking, crisps, and vagrancy. Owes much to the formula laid down by Rab C. Nesbitt.

[Alex Sarll]

A deeply noughties artefact, rooted in that UK variant of slacker culture which had a brief moment back when the Idler didn't advertise investment seminars, and the dole, while inefficient and insufficient, was at least deemed an acceptable expense to keep the mirage of an end to boom and bust, rather than an exercise in performative cruelty for people who find Kafka too light. Although as it turns out the guy is actually working for a fair chunk of this, after a fashion. Certainly it's a reminder of an easier time, when life didn't yet feel like outright war between the very wealthy and their direct facilitators on one side, and everyone else on the other, and there was a possibility of at least kidding yourself you were carving out a life aligned with neither the City wankers nor the underclass. From this distance, though, the snobbery of that is much more noticeable, not to mention the various other -isms and -phobias we didn't yet notice so readily, or in some cases even know to name. Still, here and there a few moments shine through the fug, crazy nights that actually sound enviable and not just exhausting, or epiphanies when the light falls just right the morning after. Possibly I'm just extending it the affection of an animal recognising its own face in the mirror; I was never this druggy or rackety, but I remember a few weird outings that made magic in the cracks of the city like this, back before capital filled so many of them in, and on some level I get a Proustian charge simply from seeing Rude Bimmers namechecked in print. By the end he's calmed it down a bit and there's less in the way of nightmarish 'legends', more of the great London mystery we've all been skirting the edges of at least back to Machen - the banality and the grandeur of it all, the secret sunsets have been telling all along that we can never quite hear.

[Ian Hastie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grand

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED the narrator ! couldn't put it down. enjoyed everything about it.

[Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book - Michael writes in a way that mirrors his Hartlepool drawl when you hear him speak - love the reminders of growing up over the road and knowing some of the same people - starry masterpiece!!!

[Kristian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful stuff, the Hunter S Thompson of the UK!

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Michael smiths monologues on tv and really wanted to like this book, unfortunately the structure, the diary like writing just found a bit boring.

[Brian O’Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourites. A strange little meditation on loneliness, artistry and the drug-addled brain. A quick and enjoyable read; all the better for its oddness.