Glitzch!

Description

This is Britain rewritten in predictive text. One man and his mobile phone gremlin take on the people, institutions and events that have shaped this country, autocorrecting as they go and uncovering some shocking home truths. So let's honour our majestic Queer Vicar, the Right Honourable Primary Monster, the National Death Device, and give thanks for that Bikini Inversion*; this is an extensive love letter (or rather text message) to this land we call home. * Queen Victoria, Prime Minister, National Health Service, Viking Invasion

Hugh Kellett studied languages at Oxford and has been playing around with words in London advertising agencies for most of his life. Starting his career in the heady days of the 70s, he has worked at senior level on TV, press, radio, poster and social media campaigns in many sectors from beer to beauty, food to financial, technology to travel, and pretty much everything in between. Most recently he worked at the London offices of the international giant Publicis on brands such as L'Oreal, easyJet and Fidelity. When not writing he has a communications consultancy in Cambridge.

"Shome mishtake surely? One heaven-sent misprint turns Horatio into publicity agent for Hamlet (or "Helmet", as Hugh Kellett has it). Puns, slips of the tongue, Freudian or other, have a long pedigree as a source of innocent mirth and imaginative fun. A spoonerism, probably apocryphal, has the Warden of New College Oxford call, on Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, for "Three cheers for our queer old dean". Hugh Kellett takes this a stage further in Glitzch!, where similarly VR, DF emerges as "Queer Vicar" and "Offender of the Fairy" (surreal, since Disraeli (her "Primary Monster" did actually call her "The Faery". Bishops turn plausibly into "Bisons" and the Bible begins (not ends) with "Nemesis". The predictive facility of Hugh's computer goes into glorious overdrive in mischief-making, and e-communication (excommunication?) is enthroned as the modern Lord of Misrule. The dedication "To my daring wife" appears on the title page above the standard admonition, which ranks with Spooner: "All tights reversed." Britain, land of "trial by Judy", fought the "Crimson War" against the "Ruffians", where the pioneer of modern nursing was "Floral Nightgown". And so on. Plenty of goodies (some rather rude) in this beautifully produced and illustrated cornucopia of linguistic fantasy. Bromo, High! Keep a tub!" - Anthony Lentin, Professor of History at Cambridge University "What would our history books look like if they had been recorded using this often unreliable texting system? [Glitzch!] imagines exactly that - with some hilarious results." - The Sun "Mr Kellett from Cambridge, came up with the idea a few years ago when he sent an "exceptionally rude" text message to a friend by mistake. Since then he has been testing what alternative readings of history are offered by predictive texting - and noting down the funniest." - The Daily Telegraph "Ballsy and bombastic, full of Freudian slips and Chaucerian bawdiness, and already being compared with Spooner, this is "Brutish hysteria" (British history) as you've never seen it before." - BristolMedia