Tom Sharpe has died

[Guest]

The humorous and sometime satirical British writer Tom Sharpe has died.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22794761

I confess that I found his first two novels (Riotous Assembly and Indecent Assault about South Africa under apartheid) to be genuinely satirical and very funny but the rest became a bit of an uphill struggle. Mind you I was in my early 20s when I read the first two

[LeMartinPecheur]

I confess that I found his first two novels (Riotous Assembly and Indecent Assault about South Africa under apartheid) to be genuinely satirical and very funny but the rest became a bit of an uphill struggle. Mind you I was in my early 20s when I read the first two

My reactions exactly am51. In those two S African novels you feel he's attacking a proper target for satire, and going completely OTT with the humour and situations is OK for such a grotesque political system. But when he transfers to England he's not tackling any clear and worthy target, he's just trying to screw laughs out of increasingly absurd plots and situations.

OK, he usually squeezed a few laughs out of me, but IMO it was often unrewarding work digging through to them!

Nevertheless, RIP Tom Sharpe - two excellent books is two more than most of us write!

[Pegleg]

I never read much of Tom Sharpe, I did enjoy the BBC TV adaptation of "blot on the landscape" which had an excellent cast, and changed me from a bathroom singer into a one man brassband. RIP

[gradus]

Porterhouse Blue was excellent on tv with wonderful performances from John Sessions, David Jason and the entire cast.