Book Review: Meltdown

Published on Friday 6 November 2009 17:32

MELTDOWN

Ben Elton

Bantam Press, 18.99

BEN Elton should be buried in the Blue Peter garden. I don't mean that the comic turned novelist should be interred next to George the Tortoise and all those other pets, but that the collected novels of Ben Elton should be stuck under ground, after being suitably vacuum-wrapped, in a nice, safe time capsule for children to prise open in 2059.

Why? Because Elton's books are so hopelessly and painfully zeitgeisty that they are going to be essential reading for denser students aiming to scrape a pass in Higher history on Noughties Britain. Studying the advent of reality TV? See Dead Famous (2001). The rise of Facebook, in-your-face sexuality and new-age religious waffle? Flick through Blind Faith (2007).

Now Elton has come over all topical again with a financial crisis fable called Meltdown. His hero is a likeable dad called Jimmy who trades in Hungarian crops that haven't been sown yet from the top a fictional skyscraper lovingly nicknamed The Dildo. Or did, until the bubble burst.

Jimmy finds himself not quite out on the street, but at least out of the street that he used to own. Cue a morality tale about how not having money is great because you get to spend time with your kids (rather than watch them being nannied) and about how you should really listen to your staid bank manager dad (if you're lucky enough to have one).

Elton's hero, however, is overshadowed by a supporting cast of old yooni pals: a house-flipping Labour MP who claims back part of the cost of his missus's hairdryer on eccies; a trendily bespectacled architect who designs a rainbow-shaped building with one end conveniently located in a tax haven; and a familiar sounding Meltdown villain, the amoral Sir Rupert "Roop the Boot" Bennett, chief executive of the Royal Lancashire Bank or the RLS.

The Jimmys and Roops did need taking down a peg or two. "Smart-Alec comedians had dismissed Jimmy's predecessors as no better than robber barons... now cool people dug money," Elton has his hero say. It looks like Meltdown has let one joker have his revenge, although Jimmy never clarified whether the smart-Alecs in question were wearing shiny suits and introducing Harry Enfield's "Loadsamoney".

&#149 This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 08/11/09