Review of Dom Joly's 'The Dark Tourist'

I will be finishing off my reviews for series 4 of 'The I.T. Crowd' once I have handed in my dissertation however, in the mean time I have written a review for 'The Dark Tourist' by Dom Joly. Here it is for your reading pleasure...

Whilst most travel writers would baulk at the thought of holidaying in the ‘Killing Fields’ of Cambodia or the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, comedian Dom Joly readily takes up the mantle of the morbidly fascinated in ‘The Dark Tourist’.

Better known for his antics on ‘Trigger Happy TV’ dressed as a giant squirrel or shouting into a giant mobile phone, Joly’s adventures are a clever mixture of macabre history and witty observations that weave in his own experiences of growing up in war-torn Lebanon.

The title refers to ‘dark tourism’ which involves travelling to destinations associated with death or suffering, and there is no shortage of assassinations and torture here. Each trip offers an insightful snapshot of places which are only glimpsed in news reports. During his visits to the ‘Axis of evil’ that are Iran and North Korea, Joly discovers how people live under these oppressed regimes and whether his preconceptions hold true.

At points his accounts prove to be surprisingly moving, particularly during one surreal episode where he is offered Pol Pot’s shoes for a half million dollars only to realise that the vendor is a war criminal.

There are of course the cultural gaffes when Joly decides to play the bumbling outsider who evades the local authorities, so as to lighten the mood, but really he is questioning his own desire to venture into these places of pain and misery.

Compared to the abundance of light travel literature littering the shelves of bookshops ‘The Dark Tourist’ is a refreshing antidote that delves into the complexities of the human psyche and explores our own heart of darkness.