Andy Hamilton (1) (1954–)

What's not to like? Not up to the best of the series but, nonetheless, pleasing. Moral dilemmas - illegal downloading v. over-egging the insurance claim. The realisation that sometimes awful moany people have got every right to be so. Surprise that mild dementia is not so bad if you can get out to a pub occasionally - and have got entertaining grandchildren. The benefits of family sing-songs. Knowing when to draw the line with Christmas charity.

I used to love the TV series that this book is based on & still have fond memories of the classic 'Christmas Party' episode of 1991 (coincided with our team night out & was semi-prophetic!!).

This was written in 1994 with the millennium in mind and I suspect that it would have been far funnier if it had been read between 1994 & 2000 rather than in 2011. If you know the characters, they were all there & all as funny as usual. Some of the stories they were talking about were scarily prophetic show more (Icelandic volcanoes anyone? Seb Coe as PM rather than being made a Lord in 2000?) but reading it now just didn't quite hit the spot. Still it whiled away a few hours and was an excellent anti-dote to the more gritty and depressing reading matter that I've been subjecting myself to of late! show less

This tries too hard to be clever and a lot of the assumptions about 2000 are just plain wrong, it was probably interesting and topical at the time but now it's just a bit too dated. You get to meet all the characters again.

I stumbled upon Andy Hamilton's hilarious series by happenstance. What a fortunate occurance for me!

Highly recommended for fawlty towers, black adder, red dwarf fans..................