The Reader
22/4/05
No 91, p32

Tony Wilson’s first novel explores the world of sports media and it’s not a million miles away from football TV shows and personalities like Melbourne’s Eddie McGuire. Wilson’s characters include a crass but charming ex-player, Ian ‘Tickets’ Thompson, whose autobiography is called Tickets: On Himself.

Tickets is the star of a buffoonish, high rating footy show hosted by Stan Yeomans, who combines running a football club with being so far up the ‘fundamental orifice’ of bullyboy network owner Barry Haynes that ‘it’s a wonder he can see daylight,’ says Bernard Zuel in the Sydney Morning Herald. In fact, it’s a lot like the satirical TV show Frontline, says Matthew Ricketson in The Age. “Both are grounded in reality; both take their targets’ behaviour and attitudes and extend them to their logical breaking-point for satirical effect,” he says.

This is a ‘scurrilous and consistently hilarious’ book, says Zuel, and what lifts Wilson above mere competence is his ability to make the predictable parodies and jokes believable.

This is a book in a million says Ian Syson in The Age – an “intricately crafted, hilarious, ultra contemporary political parody/tragedy’ that ‘sparkles from beginning to end with exhilarating freshness and inventiveness.” Wilson isn’t Australia’s answer to Ben Elton, says Zuel – “he’s better than that.”