Showing results by author "Dom Joly" in All Categories

Dom Joly was born in Beirut and lived there until he was 18. He lived through the civil war, went to school with Osama Bin Laden, and learned to ski. At the age of seven he was sent to an English boarding school. It was a schizophrenic existence. Dom's parents divorced when he was 18, and he moved permanently to the UK, becoming a diplomat, a political journalist and then famous as a man who dressed as a giant squirrel. He has been back to Lebanon only twice since. Then he read about an attempt to encourage tourism in this long-suffering country: The Lebanon Mountain Trail.

Ever since he was given a copy of Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World for his ninth birthday, Dom has been obsessed with the world of cryptozoology—monster hunting—and in Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, he heads to six completely different destinations to investigate local monster sightings. Are the monsters all the product of fevered minds, or is there a sliver of truth somewhere in the madness? Either way, the search gives Dom an excuse to dive into six fascinating destinations on a gloriously nutty adventure.

Ever since he can remember, Dom Joly has been fascinated by travel to odd places. In part this stems from a childhood spent in war-torn Lebanon, where instead of swapping marbles in the schoolyard, he had a shrapnel collection - the schoolboy currency of Beirut. Dom's upbringing was interspersed with terrifying days and nights spent hunkered in the family basement under Syrian rocket attack or coming across a pile of severed heads from a sectarian execution in the pine forests near his home. 

Mystifyingly, 37.9 million visit England each year. Why? There’s basically nothing here. What are they looking for, and what do they find? Dom decides to try to find out. To do something he’d never considered before: to treat England as he would any other country. Surely there’s more to England than a slightly dull, green and pleasant land. Surely, it’s not just fish and chips, Shakespeare and the queen. Is it? 

Dom Joly sets off round the world again, but this time he's not looking to holiday in a danger zone - he's monster hunting. In Scary Monsters and Super Creeps he heads to six completely different destinations to investigate local monster sightings.

In 2004 Dom Joly wrote a spoof autobiography called Look At Me, Look At Me. In Here Comes the Clown, he takes up the story of his life from 14 January 2000 when the very first episode of Trigger Happy TV aired on Channel 4 and everything changed for him. Suddenly he was famous; reality was weirder than any fiction he could conjure up. This is the story of what happened next, through snippets of recollections from his adventures in show business....

At last in audio - Dom Joly's no holds barred autobiography of a man with the ego of Napoleon and the talent of Darren Day with a brand new exclusive introduction. Dom Joly reveals how he murdered his Armenian nanny before his second birthday, how as a student he inadvertently gave Kurt Cobain the inspiration for 'Smells like Teen Spirit', how as a producer for ITN he mistook John Major for a large lizard.

Please note: contains strong language and adult content.

Be warned - this raw, unpolished adventure across the States contains alligator wrestling, leather chaps and Vegas weddings. As a multi-award winning comedian and travel journalist, Dom Joly's take on any destination is always witty, sharp, hilarious and irreverent - even more so when that destination is the backwaters of the USA.