Prometheus, Volume 2. Introduction

I turn 45 in a couple of weeks.

It's an age where you start to develop a certain pessimistic acceptance.

You consider that if there is a God, there's nothing to say he didn't put your life together with the same degree of care and interest that most of his show late on a Friday afternoon.

You realize the last time that you gave your partner an orgasm was when they were looking out of the window and saw the neighbor reverse over your foot.

And you realize that not only are you going to die, but that your planet and species will die with you. Of course we are not the first

civilization to have had this feeling, but we are the first civilization to be

right. So this feels like a good time to be releasing an audio book of collected journalism

just before life on earth is extinguished by a reality TV host over a mediocre golf club

burger at his nuclear winter White House, Marilago, a kind of three-star black lodge.

Most of this book consists of columns I wrote for the Guardian over the last couple of years.

This job generally involved me spending a lot of time explaining to an editor why they shouldn't be offended by something they hadn't understood.

I personally found it a bit odd that I wrote for them at all.

When I grew up, if you saw someone with a copy of the guardian, it meant they must have mugged their social worker.

In many ways, this is a kind of golden age of sardonic commentary.

Marina Hyde, David Mitchell, Barrett Brown. I've read some of my favorite funny writing

over the last few years. So writing columns was fun, partly because I didn't need to be doing it.

Writing columns reminded me of when I started out and I used to work in writers rooms for other

comedians TV shows. There'd be a whole bunch of line writers in there better at it than me,

so the script was going to be great anyway. It was just a question of what I could add to it.

In any case, I don't compare myself with such people. I see my true artistic rivals as being

on the UK crime scene. Some authors say they picture an ideal reader when they write and write to that one person.

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