Dom Joly - Trigger Happy TV Storybook
Trigger Happy TV is more than a comedy show—it is a time capsule from a brief, unrepeatable moment in British culture. Emerging at the turn of the millennium, before smartphones, social media, and viral content transformed public behaviour, the series thrived on genuine reactions from unsuspecting members of the public. Dom Joly’s surreal pranks disrupted everyday life with a uniquely British blend of absurdity, deadpan humour, and anarchic charm, capturing a society that had not yet learned to perform for the camera.
Set against the backdrop of Cool Britannia and rapid technological change, Trigger Happy TV documented the last days of public anonymity, when confusion, awkwardness, and spontaneity were still authentic. This book explores the cultural, technological, and social forces that made the show possible, tracing its origins, impact, and enduring legacy. It reveals how a simple hidden-camera concept became a defining portrait of Britain on the cusp of a new era.
Conspiracy Tourist
Dom Joly sets off on his travels again, immersing himself in the strange world of conspiracies. On his journeys he meets conspiracy theorists galore in destinations all over the world, some famous, some rather less so.
Conspiracy theories used to be fun, a bit of laugh. Did we really land on the moon? Was Paul McCartney cloned? Nowadays, however, in the aftermath of Donald Trump, a global pandemic and the ever-increasing influence of social media algorithms, they are part of the body politic and a massive cause of division and mistrust.
In The Conspiracy Tourist Dom Joly sets out on a global journey to find out what's going on. His travels see him meeting followers of QAnon, hunting for UFOs in Roswell, chasing Alex Jones of Info Wars around Austin, trying to prove that Finland exists and taking a flat-earther to the edge of the world.
On the way Dom inevitably finds the funny and the quirky, but he also tries to understand what makes people so drawn to conspiracy theories. What if those he has long dismissed as crazed loonies actually have a point? What if we are the sheeple and they've been right all along?
Join a wide-eyed, slightly jaded, adventurous tourist on a very different kind of sight-seeing trip.
Such Miserable Weather
Having travelled all around the world in search of adventure, Dom Joly thought it might just be time to explore his own country.
So, as he prepares to embark on a national tour, Dom decides to try and get enthused about travelling around England. To complicate matters further, a global pandemic is looming.
With his usual eye for funny detail and curious inability to stay out of trouble, Dom meanders around the country on a road trip from hell. Along the way, he gets stuck up a hill in the Yorkshire Dales, is chatted up by a vampire in Grimsby and visits most of the country’s dullest tourist attractions, so that you never have to.
This is England, as seen through the eyes of a grumpy, middle-aged man, driving through a historical crisis in pursuit of happiness and a decent meal.
Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy trip.
The Downhill Hiking Club
Three men. 470 kilometres. Twenty-one days.
At a boozy, cricket-filled afternoon at Lord's, Dom Joly convinces his two closest friends to agree to the unthinkable: a challenging hike across Lebanon, from the Israeli border in the south, along the spine of the country's mountain range, all the way to the Syrian border in the north. For Joly it is something of a homecoming, having grown up in Beirut. It was a happy childhood, though he did go to school with Osama bin Laden.
Arriving in Lebanon armed with copious amounts of Vaseline - and no walking experience, bar taking the dog for the occasional stroll - Dom, Chris and Harry don't quite know what they've got themselves into. Joined by their bemused chaperone Caroll, they meet a variety of characters along the way including Ali, a stony-faced Hezbollah Museum guide who seems unperturbed by circling Israeli jets, and part-time Londoner Raf, who challenges Dom and the boys to a brain-freeze drinking contest. From a hair-raising creep along the 'Valley of the Skulls' to accidentally flashing an unsuspecting Ethiopian cook, the three friends just about manage to keep going.
With more than a smattering of persiflage and some cringe-worthy moments, The Downhill Hiking Club is a big-hearted, witty and affectionate love letter to Lebanon and its rich history with a meditation on family and homeland at its heart. Written with Dom's trademark humour, it is a paean to both the simple joys of friendship and to growing old disgracefully.
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps
Dom Joly sets off round the world, but this time he's not looking to holiday in a danger zone - he's monster hunting.
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.
He explores the Redwood Curtain in northern California in search of Sasquatch; in Canada he visits Lake Okanagan hoping to catch a glimpse of a thirty-foot snake-like creature called Ogopogo; and near Lake Tele in Congo he risks his life tracking the vegetarian sauropod Mokele-mbembe. Naturally he heads to Loch Ness - but for this hunt he has his family in tow; he treks across the Khumbu Valley in Nepal looking for Yeti; and in the hills above Hiroshima in Japan he enlists the help of a local man to find the Hibagon, a terribly smelly 'caveman ape'.
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. In typically hilarious and irreverent fashion, Dom explores the cultures that gave rise to these monster myths and ends up in some pretty hairy situations with people even stranger than the monsters they are hunting.
The Dark Tourist
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.
These early experiences left Dom with a profound loathing for the sanitized experiences of the modern-day travel industry and a taste for the darkest of places. In this brilliantly odd and hilariously told travel memoir, Dom Joly sets out on a quest to visit those destinations from which the average tourist would, and should, run a mile. The more insalubrious the place, the more interesting is the journey and so we follow Dom as he skis in Iran on segregated slopes, spends a weekend in Chernobyl, tours the assassination sites of America and becomes one of the few Westerners to be granted entry into North Korea. Eventually Dom journeys back to his roots in Beirut only to discover he was at school with Osama Bin Laden.
Funny and frightening in equal measure, this is a uniquely bizarre and compelling travelogue from one of the most fearless and innovative comedians around.
