Book Review: An Idiot Abroad - The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

If Karl Pilkington didn't exist, I'd probably have to invent him... then any time anyone ever calls me a "miserable northern bastard", I can refer them to Karl. Compared to him, I'm a children's TV presenter.

Karl isn't a great writer, he'd probably be the first to tell you that. Yet the diaries he kept while filming the first series of An Idiot Abroad make for amusing and, at times, enlightening reading. Unlike many other travel writers, he's not afraid to tell you about the grotty parts of the world's most famous destinations. In fact, most of the time, that's all he tells you about. He's like a more cynical, far less erudite Bill Bryson.

Every time I hear about Israel on the news it's normally something bad. It's never a story about a man who's grown the world's biggest melon, is it? Its problems are normally related to religion and seeing as I'm not into religion in the slightest, I don't understand the situation in Israel and if it's too complicated to learn overnight, I'd rather leave it. It's the same reason I've never bothered learning chess.

Karl Pilkington: travelling the world with a frown, so you don't have to bother.

Adventures On The High Teas

Stuart Maconie is back on the road, now venturing further from the safety of his northern birthplace (which he explored in Pies and Prejudice) to investigate the myths of Middle England, home of Jane Austen, Nick Drake, David Brent, Margaret Thatcher, Fred West, Midsomer Murders, Brief Encounter and Tubular Bells. It's an easy life being a celebrity travel book writer: you get on a train, spend a day wandering round Chipping Norton or Burton-On-Trent, sample the local wares, chat to a few disgruntled passers by, make a few notes, nick a few bits from other people's books or blogs, then cobble it all together with wry humour and a little seasoning - voilà, £11-99 in Waterstones. I might resent it if Maconie wasn't a writer first and celeb second, if he hadn't worked his way up through the NME trenches, if he wasn't so warm and avuncular, at times even bordering on fascinating.

Often here, the opinions become more important than the places. You're liable to come away from this book knowing more about what Maconie thinks about Top Gear, complaint culture, the British railway system and Jane Austen vs. George Eliot than you are the Cotswolds, Tunbridge Wells or Leamington Spa... on which he steals a quote from one blogger, Oliver's Poetry Garret, though sadly misses out on referencing the true champion of Leam, Steve at Bloggertropolis. Steve, your agent needs to work harder.

As with his previous books, Maconie becomes most enthused when talking about his first love, music, pottering round Nick Drake's graveyard or scouring the hillsides that inspired Mike Oldfield. For me, the most interesting chapter is the most northern, when he arrives in Buxton, Derbyshire - a town I know, and would question its "Middle" credentials - but that's because I rarely venture any further south at risk of being shot. Still, reading this book made me think it might be worth the risk... one day.

Time Is Running Out

The person who invents a safe, reliable teleport system will never have to work again. We spend so much of our lives rushing here and there, always trying to get one place ahead in the queue... to have that pressure finally lifted from our shoulders would be a godsend.

Take yesterday. I'm coming off the motorway. I pull over into the exit lane, and at the very last second, rather than slipping in behind arsehole some impatient arsehole in an Audi cuts me up. Everyone wants to be ahead of the person in front.

Or how about when I head across town for my afternoon coffee? I'm walking fast. As I approach a street corner, I see a man heading towards the same corner from another direction, also fast. We're both going the same way, we're going to reach the corner at the same time - one of us will end up stuck behind the other. We both speed up. I spill hot coffee on my hand, but I win the race. This time, the impatient arsehole is me.

We rush everywhere - but imagine if we didn't. Imagine if we could just boil down our molecules into ray form then shoot them across the planet to be reassembled perfectly - minus the fly DNA, Jeff - at a point of our choosing. Or imagine we could BAMF! like the recently departed Nightcrawler. How cool would that be?

I spend up to 2 hours a day in some kind of transit. How much more productively might I use that time? Just think of the books I could read, the stories I could write, the blogs I could surf... though I would still have to find some time to listen to my music, since often these days the only listening time I get is when I'm stuck in the car.

The person who invents a safe, reliable teleport system will never have to work again. Anyone got any ideas?