Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris by Lucian Randall

As a fan of The Day Today – me and a flatmate once spent the best part of a summer watching and re-watching it until for an agonising while we could only communicate via its catchphrases – I’d been waiting with mounting excitement for this book about the genius behind the shows, Chris Morris. So I was quadraspazzed with joy to discover that it’s a gripping read that comfortably does justice to the man and his work.

The chapters about Morris’s early life in local radio are particularly glorious. From the off Morris was a cheeky genius wreaking havoc and playing pranks, to the horror of some of his pompous colleagues. But he was also shrewdly observing and absorbing – frequently with some disgust – the ways of news broadcasting. These observations would be channelled into On The Hour, the hilarious radio forerunner of The Day Today.  The narrative of Disgusting Bliss then follows him and his gang all the way to the Brass Eye, the controversies it sparked and beyond.

The story is authoritatively stitched together by an author with an entertaining style and a cracking turn of phrase: one interviewees’ recollections are described as “entertainingly gnomic”, Morris’s curly hair “bobbled around on his head in a way that was mesmerizingly independent of his own movements”; there is talk of “groaning puns” and during the creation of the Day Today theme the musical team “roamed around the news music landscape, picking over the major beasts of the genre”. Occasionally the technical detail is tad too dense, but only slightly so and there is always another laugh or eyebrow-raising insight just round the corner.

Randall interviewed scores of people and gets to the heart of the story. The recollections of the key players, together with the author’s scrupulous research takes the reader behind the scenes of Morris’s work as well as painting a vivid portrait of the man himself. I hadn’t expected that portrait to be as strangely touching as it is. Amid his subversive genius and madness Morris nonetheless comes across at times as a gentle and thoughtful character. One interviewee even recounts a tale that suggests, he says, Morris is “in touch with his feminine side” and another remembers how sweet he was when she fell ill. The account of how he conducts himself during ideas meetings is also interesting.

The wit of some of today’s mirth-makers is far exceeded by their lust for fame and attention. For Morris the opposite is true: he is a genius who genuinely shies from publicity. But this book shines an intelligent, informing light onto this mysterious and meticulous man. Disgusting Bliss is packed with new information and insights but happily combines the familiar with the fresh. So, of course, you will find yourself cackling in recognition at the reminders of the greatest scenes and lines from The Day Today and Brass Eye. I strongly recommend this excellent book.

Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris by Lucian Randall has been described as “impeccably researched and fluently written” by The Observer, “detailed and utterly absorbing” by Metro and was Time Out’s book of the week. You can buy it here.