The Timewaster Letters

Hilarious! Great stuff!

Robin Cooper (Mr); resident of Brondesbury Villas, London, spoon collector, colour inventor, artist and poet is a dreamer - a visionary if you will. His days are spent writing to Ikea, The Society of Existential Analysts, Dorling Kindersley and the Liberal Party with ideas for new logos, furniture designs, children's novels etc. The problem is that he has a tin ear for prose, a tin eye for a good design (indeed no redeeming artistic abilities at all) and what can only be described as a "fevered imagination".Robin Cooper is, in fact, Robert Popper, creator of the truly wonderful comedy series Look Around You (amongst other things) and his distinctive brand of humour is evident here. The Timewaster Letters is, of course, no more than the prank phonecall committed to paper ("Is your fridge running? Yes? Well you'd better chase after it then!"), a more developed form of knocking on someone's door and running away, and many will consider it childish, peurile and a cheap laugh at best. Indeed it's a little hit or miss - sometimes the humour IS just silly and often the target of Mr Cooper's correspondances simply reply with a brief, polite request to stop writing to them. Overall it's not unlike David Thorne's The Internet is a Playground (which Timewaster predates by quite a few years).However, many of the episodes ARE funny - very funny - (at least to me) and a few had me literally crying with laughter (much to the irritation of my wife - don't read it on a train).So, do be careful before buying this as it's very much a matter of taste.

Wonderful book - very clever, well - written and endlessly entertaining.

I had high hopes for this as it was recommended to me since I love David Thorne's work so much and it didn't really come close.The book surrounds relies to emails which are clearly taking the mick but the replies are always extremely professional. It amazing how long he can carry the communication on despite it getting more and more ridiculous with each reply! The difference was that with David Thorne throughout the entire book I laughed out loud and often shared extracts with my partner as he was forever asking me what I found so funny but with this book, despite being amusing, I never really felt the need to laugh out loud and only shared a few that were particularly good.Despite what seems like a negative review I did enjoy the book, and I think I was always going to be slightly disappointed as I was comparing it to something that was more superior but none the less many will enjoy the nonsense nature of this book and will find it very amusing!

Bought this for my dad, when I first read it I cried laughing, hopefully he will do the same

Having read the book, I re-read all the reviews on the cover.They include a list of people whose opinion I would normally respect. Do they really think this book is funny?? I assume they comments are hightened exclaimations of sarcasm.If that is not the case, I would recommend they get out of the house more and develop a wider circle of friends.The format was initially funny for a couple of letter but soon became tiresome. Reading these mildly amusing letters and their polite indifferent rejections has now become my standard cure for insomnia.Unless you are a person with a zeal for assembling Airfix models or a collector of used train tickets, I would politely suggext you give this book a wide birth..

This is my favourite book of all time. I used to own it before and someone borrowed it and never returned it, so have bought another copy as a present for my boyfriend. Even now reading it again I am laughing out loud and I can't think of another book which has done that. Put this in your downstairs toilet and visitors will never return! If you like dry and witty humour this is for you. Maybe if you are the sort of person who finds x factor entertaining you might not get this. It is the names he makes up which I love best and the crazy ideas for stories which are pure, subtle comedy. Brilliant, just brilliant.

Years ago I read a very non PC but extremely funny book called the Henry Root Letters. When I saw this, This book by Robin Cooper seems to be in a similar vein, but sadly I didn't find it very funny at all. The slapstick, somewhat silly humour just didn't appeal to me. With the Henry Root letters, much of the humour was in the replies that were printed.Ah well, I should have been warned by the title, I suppose.S