UK ON A G-STRING: ADVENTURES OF THE WORLD'S FIRST AND WORST DOOR-TO-DOOR BUSKER.

UK ON A G-STRING: ADVENTURES OF THE WORLD'S FIRST AND WORST DOOR-TO-DOOR BUSKER by JUSTIN BROWN.

SOURCE: Ex-library stock.

THE BOOK {According to the back cover}: Overcome with patriotic fervour, New Zealander Justin Brown bets an Australian mate that the All Blacks will thrash the Wallabies in an up-coming match. 

They don't. 

Forced to pay his debt, Justin has to busk his way around England until he earns enough money for his airfare home. Armed with a black duffel coat and a guitar he travels the country in mid-winter, knocking on doors and singing for his supper.

Along the way he meets gypsies, drinks with Britain's most famous busker, harasses carol singers, plucks turkeys, speaks to J.K.Rowling and gets told to sod off 357 times.

FIRST SENTENCE {Chapter 1: The Bet}: door-to-door busker n. one who goes door to door, singing, hoping not to be told to bugger off. See: beggar, bum, hobo, peddlar, homeless Kiwi idiot.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 166}:  After taking up three minutes of her precious time, I now felt I had to justify not only why I was standing at her front door with a guitar, but also why I was acting like some brainless, Neanderthal chimp attempting amateur charades. 

MY THOUGHTS: Described as 'Travel Writing' which according to about.com is defined as 'a form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator's encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject'. On these grounds I suppose UK On A G-String is indeed rightfully categorised but in my opinion it takes more than a writer recalling how much the people of certain places responded to his busking door-to-door, harassing them for money, in order to pass as such. 

For a book that could have been a tremendously quirky and very different kind of 'travelogue' I'm afraid I found the whole thing ludicrous, the writing conceited and amateurish, the narrative repetitive (given how many times the author wondered about the possibility of 'being beaten up' though not a violent person by the end I almost wished someone had punched him) and as for it being humorous? Well, lets just say I didn't manage a smile let alone a laugh but then I suspect that this is a book that will probably appeal more to a male audience.

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