I SAW AN OPPORTUNITY VIA THE COMEDY CROWD AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID BOOK
Written by Tom Ratcliffe, aka Nick Hendrie
Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Hermes Delivery
Hermes Delivery who?
Too late, we’ve left it with your racist neighbour.
That’s not strictly relevant to anything that follows but (1) always start with a joke and (2) it’s related to something annoying that happened to me this morning.
I’ve written a book, it’s a satire of self-help books and #grindset mindsets and all that. It’s called Grow Up! and I couldn’t have got it published without the Comedy Crowd.
This all started when I was watching The Apprentice and I thought “we’re not far away from genuinely insane people starring on this show”. To test this theory, I applied for 2019’s The Apprentice under the guise of a lunatic business man, using phrases such as “I’m a big business dog and I’ll bite you in the face” and “I’m a business bastard like Sir Alan.” Remarkably I got through to the interview stage but couldn’t attend as I’d used the name Colin Goosewary on the form and you had to bring photo ID. I realised the world would now accept anything as long as it was under the guise of ambition.
It’s probably worth mentioning I’m obsessed with self-help books and have been for years. I tell myself it’s ironic but I’m secretly hoping one day I’ll find a cheat code for life. Even when they’re of no practical use to me, they are – invariably – hilarious. The 5AM Club by Robin Sharma is a great example, as it’s a particularly delightful piece of old shit. It’s written as a fictional tale of people vastly improving their lives by forgoing sleep and getting up at 5 am every day. Like a poorly-coded AI bot tried to write a novel to encourage productivity and accidentally romanticised increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s. It’s like Eat.Pray.Love for GQ readers.
During one of the lockdowns I began combining these two passions into one project – a self-help book written from the point of view of the lunatic prospective Apprentice candidate. I thought about where society was heading with its obsession with productivity and grindsets and horrendous, suffocating consumerism and realised it wouldn’t be long until the youngest of us were being encouraged to think in the same ways. Grow Up! was born.
I wrote a little bit, showed it to a friend and he asked if I thought I was coping okay with lockdown. As I’d recently shaved myself a mohawk I realised my judgement might be at an all-time low and maybe this book wasn’t the great idea I thought it was.
Sometime later I opened the weekly Comedy Crowd newsletter (I’d thoroughly recommend it) and there was a call for any and all comedy book ideas. I double-checked the bit that said ‘no idea is too insane’ and sent off my idea for Grow Up! and some sample chapters. Remarkably, it was met with enthusiasm. After a few more sample chapters and discussions with people (and checking thoroughly that this wasn’t all being funded by some well-meaning family member) I signed a contract for my first book with Vulpine Press.
I basically wrote down all the stupid things I’d read in self-help books overs the years and anything else I could think that was funny. I would recommend writing as a character or under a pseudonym. You’re free to say appalling things with total impunity, knowing you can just blame the character or irony or whatever it is Jimmy Carr says. If I could give one piece of advice it would be check that the name of your pseudonym is not already an author BEFORE you’ve written the book and ask the publisher not to link your book with said real author on Amazon (sorry Nick).
18 months, two editors, a pregnancy, a content edit, a very humbling grammatical edit and a libel check later and my first book is published. The moral of the story is to keep an eye on the Comedy Crowd Opportunities and never give up on your insane ideas (/find equally deranged editors). So if you fancy getting yourself or a loved (or loathed) one a comedy book this year, rather than a stand up’s memoir that conveniently omits all the cocaine why not Grow Up! A Self Help Guide for Toddlers by Nick Hendrie (not that one)?