Tony Hawks

I actually found this book left on a train that I was travelling on and having heard of if not actually read “Round Ireland with a Fridge” I picked up fully expecting to find him pushing a piano up and down the mountains between France and Spain. What I got was something very different.

When a skiing trip goes wrong and spurred on by the knowledge that one of his friends already owns a house in the country, Hawks impulsively buys a house in the French Pyrenees. Soon enough, he has to set about moving himself and his piano to the continent.

The problem is that the idea behind the book is pretty mundane, something any one of us could probably do, finances and desire permitting. This meant that I couldn't entirely trust what I was being told, that he hadn't felt the need to add his own comic twist and exaggerate. Whilst I enjoyed parts of this book, his attempts to move the piano to France in a van immediately springs to mind, at the same time it felt forced or more accurately part of a stand up routine. I found it refreshing that he tried to integrate himself into the native community with all its cultural mix-ups rather than simply mix with fellow ex-pats.

I enjoyed Hawks writing and I read large parts of it with a smile on my face but ultimately I only found this an OK read.… (more)

In the late 1990's the English comedian Tony Hawks (no relation to the skateboarder) did an impressively dumb thing by hitchhiking around Ireland hauling a refrigerator. Luckily for him, the people he encountered in Ireland were overwhelmingly kind to him.

Tony's travelogue manages to paint a very generous picture of the country in spite of his numerous (and generally tongue-in-cheek) complaints about it. Highlights of the trip involve a brief encounter with some of the world's humblest royalty and a conversation with the head matchmaker of Europe's foremost Singles' Festival.… (more)