Sun Boiled Onions

by Vic Reeves

New Year's Day, 1999. Vic Reeves wakes up to discover a flock of seven white doves of peace flying around his bedroom, "casting a Disneylike sense of well-being about." However, all is not well; Vic re- awakens several hours later to discover that the doves have stolen his prized bust of "a foreboding sense of gloom now hangs over the home". So begins Vic Reeves' Sunboiled Onions, a fictional diary packed with Vic's own paintings and drawings of a month in the mind of one of the UK's most popular comedians. Like his TV series with sidekick Bob Mortimer, Sunboiled Onions has a surreal menace in its humour, reflected in Vic's weird drawings of famous figures, which are often uncannily accurate yet strangely disconcerting with their eyes drawn too far apart. Elvis crops up throughout the book, appearing as Sir Walter Raleigh in King Lear (naked from the waist down, of course), buying fan heaters from Argos with Frank Sinatra and ironing his slacks in his bucolic cottage. Alongside such reveries, Vic deals with the problems of his everyday "January 10--Flies swarm around the pork in my attic, so I get rid of it, all 150 lbs of it, in a ditch near B&Q". Along the way, Vic muses on various celebrities and their foibles, including Michael Jackson, Abba, Henry VIII, Eric Morecombe and Richard Nixon. Those who love Reeves and Mortimer will celebrate Sunboiled Onions as another manifestation of the genius of the man they call the Darlington Dadaist. --Jerry Brotton

Genres: Comedy, Humor, Nonfiction

150 pages

First published September 30, 1999

Reviews

[Ben Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this a long while ago around time of publication then lost my copy. So I did the only decent thing and wait fifteen years then bought another one. The closest thing to pure Reeves' internal workings outside of those very early Big Night Outs with a Elvis-fixated logic that everyone can enjoy.

[Maya Panika · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a long time fan, I don't quite know how this book escaped my notice for so long. I enjoyed it hugely. It is classic Reeves, consisting of diary entries detailing a peculiar month in the life and death of Vic Reeves, but mostly consists of illustrations in Vic Reeves/Jim Moir's inimitable style. In fact, many came from The Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer, and were used to illustrate the lyrics of the opening songs. Most of the rest seem - inexplicably - to feature Elvis - for reasons unknown. They are extremely intricate and incredibly funny. I laughed out loud constantly and was often laughing o hard I gave myself cramp. If you love Vic and Bob, you'll probably love this book - why would you not?

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vic Reeves (aka Jim Moir) is something of a childhood hero of mine. I attribute my love of surrealism completely to this man. Sun Boiled Onions is a diary-cum-art book. The diary entries are absurd and hilarious; the artwork is too, but is also actually very impressive and shows a clear, individual style especially his portraiture with the eyes spaced too far apart.

The diary entries had me in tears. For instance, his rant about a rat in his ricicles, which is actually a spoon, and the appearance of country singer Waylon Jennings moving sideways like a crab through his house in the early morning.

You either get this or you don't. I do, and I absolutely love it.