Ben Elton - Chart Throb
No spoilers within…
For the thousands that dream to be a pop star, those who are mad enough to consider going on TV talent shows to express their vocal skills to the world, this book would be utterly useless to them, basically because such cretins probably can’t read 
To everyone else however this is a fair hoot from cover to cover, if you’ve ever read a Ben Elton novel before then you can expect his usual harsh but fairly subdued humour, thankfully without the myriad of stand up quotes and one-liners from ‘Black Adder’ that all to often appear in his other works. Elton also doesn’t pull any punches with language, but it’s all in context and simply adds to the realism.
There are numerous obvious parallels in the book with real life shows such as ‘Pop stars’ and ‘X Factor’, but with the clever twist that he also mentions them in the story as ‘previous shows’, I can only guess as a mechanism to avoid potential legal action
The protagonist of the story is Calvin Simms along with his two ’star’ judges Beryl Blenheim and Rodney Root, not too subtly modeled on Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh. With the help of these three characters we are taken on a journey of love, hate, stardom and of course tv editing.
Whilst Chart Throb is not an epic, i doubt it’ll win any awards but it is a great laugh and somewhat insightful into the world of these competitions and the naivety of the people who take part in them.
And for a new idea lets award it a BitchAboutIt score…
Chart Throb by Ben Elton achieves a 3 out of 5, and is recommended for anyone who wants some light reading for say, a holiday or flight.