You Like Mashed Potato, Don’t you?

The Great Book of Mobile Talk

Illustrated by Posy Simmonds, a brilliantly curated collection of sublime and delicious snippets of overheard mobile phone talk - the perfect gift for mobile phone users (and detractors) everywhere

Dozens of shouty (and occasionally whispered) one-sided conversations,  all of which have been turned from annoying to hilarious thanks to a  sublime collaboration between two very beady talents.

Beautifully illustrated… it will strike a chord, even if it seems a bit unfair to strip the ordinary things people say then put them in a book, all the while scoffing at them for not being worthy of putting in a book. Still, that's Christmas for you

A modern curse is turned into a treasure trove of strangers' words

Great only in the sense of being darn good, this is a tiny, beautifully produced volume

Overheard mobile talk is a modern phenomenon. In the street, in the park, in supermarkets, in waiting rooms and even, heaven help us, in libraries, it’s quite impossible to get away from these tasty or repellent fragments of other people’s private lives, their gestures of despair or irritation, their mega-tantrums, in-jokes, celebrity spotting, instant post-mortems, office politics, whoops of joy and anger, weather reports, devilishly dull domestic details, parental problems, health issues, money matters, ultimatums, gossip, sporting news, amorous overtures, transport difficulties and breathtakingly banal banter. 
This first ever collection of disembodied airwave outpourings embraces not only life, death and the whole damn thing but also carries an eerie and all pervasive sense of multiple off-stage dramas.

Andrew Barrow is a writer and journalist who regularly contributes to the pages of the Independent, Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He has written several works of non-fiction including Animal Magic: A Brother's Story and two novels. Andrew has been listening to other people's conversations since childhood. His various collections of overheard remarks have appeared in Vogue and Tatler, in a first collection called The Great Book of Small Talk, and in 2013's The Great Book of Mobile Talk. He lives in London.

Overheard mobile pronouncements are a modern phenomenon. In the street, in the park, in supermarkets, buses, waiting rooms and even, heaven help us, in libraries, it’s quite impossible to get away from these tasty or repellent fragments of other people’s private lives. 
 
Wherever you lurk, their outbursts of despair or irritation ring out: mega-tantrums, in-jokes, celebrity spottings, instant post-mortems, office politics, whoops of joy and anger, weather reports, devilishly dull domestic details, parental problems, health issues, holiday plans, money matters, dinner menus, ultimatums, gossip, sporting news, amorous overtures, business deals – and any number of time-wasting pleasantries. 
 
From the stunningly mundane to the shockingly direct, the sublime to the ridiculous, here is a brilliantly curated collection of overheard mobile conversational gems.

Andrew Barrow

A book unlike any other: it's about jokes and brothers and grief; it's about love and death and how much, and how little, you can ever know someone else. And, like all the best autobiographies, its also about the need to remember. Offbeat, obsessive, and often killingly funny.

A very funny, original and touching memoir to a lost brother.

Animal Magic is exactly that... a funny, dark memoir. Think Tommy Cooper describing a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

A Brother's Story

'Your brother looked healthy, happy, natural. But everything else about him is extremely odd. Not faintly odd. Extremely odd. Except in appearance. He's the opposite of you.' Quentin Crisp 
 
At the age of twenty-two, the youngest of five brothers, Jonathan Barrow, was killed with his fiancée in a car crash. He left behind the manuscript of a novel, The Queue, in which, among other things, he prophesied his own death. The story of a boy and a dachshund, populated by a kaleidoscopic menagerie of people and animals and an array of anthropomorphic in-betweens, The Queue is a vivid and irreverent portrayal of the world in which Jonathan and his awe-struck older brother Andrew were raised. 
 
Jonathan and his book form the framework of a remarkable study of a young man's inner and outer effervescence, his family, England and high and low society in the Swinging Sixties. Filled with fascinating and fantastical anecdotes, Animal Magic documents a heady and peripatetic childhood in Lancashire, the Lake District and Wiltshire, misadventures at home and school, and the early working life of the two brothers, on the lower rungs of show business, backstage at Claridge's, and finally in advertising. This spellbinding elegy negotiates love affairs, family tensions, exhibitions, publishers' rejections and precarious living in a flat in Tite Street, Chelsea. 
 
Punctuated with excerpts from The Queue and Jonathan's other bizarre and brilliant writings, Animal Magic is a book bursting with humour, wit and pathos and featuring an outlandish cast of characters, from an eccentric father, a mischievous family dog and a down-and-out ex-schoolmaster to curious stars of Swinging London like Mick Jagger and Tommy Cooper. It is a memoir unlike any other.

Andrew Barrow

Praise for Animal Magic

A book unlike any other: it's about jokes and brothers and grief; it's about love and death and how much, and how little, you can ever know someone else. And, like all the best autobiographies, its also about the ne ...

A very funny, original and touching memoir to a lost brother.

Animal Magic is exactly that... a funny, dark memoir. Think Tommy Cooper describing a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

A book unlike any other: it's about jokes and brothers and grief; it's about love and death and how much, and how little, you can ever know someone else. And, like all the best autobiographies, its also about the ne ...

A very funny, original and touching memoir to a lost brother.

Animal Magic is exactly that... a funny, dark memoir. Think Tommy Cooper describing a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

A book unlike any other: it's about jokes and brothers and grief; it's about love and death and how much, and how little, you can ever know someone else. And, like all the best autobiographies, its also about the ne ...

A very funny, original and touching memoir to a lost brother.

Animal Magic is exactly that... a funny, dark memoir. Think Tommy Cooper describing a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

Books by Andrew Barrow

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter