Christian O’Connell – författare

The Bible For Blokes From The Daddy Of Breakfast RadioForeword by James Nesbitt.Christian O’Connell has been a man nearly all his life. Well, once he was a boy, then he was a teenager, then a man, but you get what we mean. So who better to save manhood from devolving into one of those spineless newt things from the Guinness ad?For years women have had everyone from Germaine Greer to Bridget Jones to tell them how to be a woman, and who have men had? No one. That is, until now . . .For ten years Christian has dispensed wisdom and advice to millions of lucky radio listeners on every topic conceivable; but it was when he saw his wife reading, and laughing at, a book called “How to Kill your Husband”, that he realised he had to write this book.Men are confused about what it is to be a man in a world where men use moisturiser and eat sandwiches with rocket. They need help. The Men Commandments is a roadmap, a compass for men (not a sat nav – they’re evil!)With his outspoken humour and ironic take on life, Christian explores male-dom; celebrating all that is great about being a man and unravelling those mysteries of masculinity that have stumped women for literally minutes.Packed full of wisdom, advice, trivia, and cheeky banter, this is the must have book for men everywhere.Includes:• The Man Quiz (a helpful quiz to establish real manliness)• The 78 genetic differences between men and women (work for which Christian is expecting a Nobel prize)• Manly Toilet Etiquette (real men do not speak at the urinals)• The History of Men (it says a lot about the psyche of Man that early Neanderthal paintings depict willies)• Men and their Mates (a relationship full of weird rituals, abuse and unspoken rules)• The Real First XI• The Men Commandments (the ten commandments that every true man needs to know)

''Women have Bridget Jones. Men have no one. Until now.'' Ricky GervaisIn the best-selling tradition of Clarkson and Moyles, this is TV and Radio personality Christian O’Connell’s take on all things men.For ten years Christian has dispensed his wisdom and advice to millions of lucky radio listeners on every topic conceivable. It was when he saw his wife reading and laughing at a book ‘How to Kill Your Husband’ that he realised he had to write this book.In his sage opinion, men need to be saved from themselves. Women need to understand men better and stop hating them and men need to make sense of why they are they way they are.''The Trouble With Men'' reveals some hard but hilarious truths about the male race. Who do men actually look to for inspiration? The Hoff? Simon Cowell? James Blunt? Why do men behave in that odd way at barbecues? Why can a man have his heart broken a thousand times by his football team and yet still forgive them more than he would a woman?With his outspoken humour and his ironic take on life, Christian explores male-dom, celebrating all that is great about being a man and unravelling the mysteries of masculinity that have stumped women for centuries.Includes:Superheroes – all of them let us down. Here’s why.The Ultimate History of Men… from caves to Ikea.The Man Test – a highly unscientific flow chart to determine just how confused you are right now.The Perfect Man – if Apple designed men…Men and Cooking – the most important part of nutrition. TV snacks.What We Want from Women – show up naked. Bring beer.Rules and Codes – the unwritten, never discussed rules about how to behave in bathrooms, cars and out and aboutMen and Sex – ‘touch them there and they love it.’Imagine a World Without Us – heaven or hell?Communication – friend and foe.What’s the Point of Us? – enough with the slagging off. Here’s what we rule at…

The Bible For Blokes From The Daddy Of Breakfast RadioForeword by James Nesbitt.Christian O’Connell has been a man nearly all his life. Well, once he was a boy, then he was a teenager, then a man, but you get what we mean. So who better to save manhood from devolving into one of those spineless newt things from the Guinness ad?For years women have had everyone from Germaine Greer to Bridget Jones to tell them how to be a woman, and who have men had? No one. That is, until now . . .For ten years Christian has dispensed wisdom and advice to millions of lucky radio listeners on every topic conceivable; but it was when he saw his wife reading, and laughing at, a book called “How to Kill your Husband”, that he realised he had to write this book.Men are confused about what it is to be a man in a world where men use moisturiser and eat sandwiches with rocket. They need help. The Men Commandments is a roadmap, a compass for men (not a sat nav - they’re evil!)With his outspoken humour and ironic take on life, Christian explores male-dom; celebrating all that is great about being a man and unravelling those mysteries of masculinity that have stumped women for literally minutes.Packed full of wisdom, advice, trivia and cheeky banter, this is the must have book for men everywhere.Includes:• The Man Quiz (a helpful quiz to establish real manliness)• The 78 genetic differences between men and women (work for which Christian is expecting a Nobel prize)• Manly Toilet Etiquette (real men do not speak at the urinals)• The History of Men (it says a lot about the psyche of Man that early Neanderthal paintings depict willies)• Men and their Mates (a relationship full of weird rituals, abuse and unspoken rules)• The Real First XI• The Men Commandments (the ten commandments that every true man needs to know)

From leading breakfast radio star Christian O’Connell comes a brilliant and laugh-out-loud story of an ordinary boy with an extraordinary secret radio show. (Broadcast from his shed.)Meet Spike, aka Radio Boy: a new Adrian Mole on the radio for the internet generation.Spike’s your average awkward 11 year old, funny and cheeky and with a mum to reckon with. When he becomes the first presenter ever to be sacked from hospital radio, he decides to carry on from a makeshift studio in the garden shed, with the help of his best friends Artie and Holly, disguising his voice and going by the moniker Radio Boy.Week by week, word gets around and soon Spike is a star… if only people knew it was actually him. When Spike begins to believe his own hype, and goes too far with his mocking of the school headmaster, a hunt is launched for the mysterious Radio Boy.Can Spike remain anonymous? Will he get to marry the girl of his dreams, Katherine Hamilton? Will he become famous and popular? The answer to most of these questions is no…

From leading breakfast radio star Christian O’Connell comes a brilliant and laugh-out-loud story of an ordinary boy with an extraordinary secret radio show. (Broadcast from his shed.)Meet Spike, aka Radio Boy: a new Adrian Mole on the radio for the internet generation.Spike’s your average awkward 11 year old, funny and cheeky and with a mum to reckon with. When he becomes the first presenter ever to be sacked from hospital radio, he decides to carry on from a makeshift studio in the garden shed, with the help of his best friends Artie and Holly, disguising his voice and going by the moniker Radio Boy.Week by week, word gets around and soon Spike is a star… if only people knew it was actually him. When Spike begins to believe his own hype, and goes too far with his mocking of the school headmaster, a hunt is launched for the mysterious Radio Boy.Can Spike remain anonymous? Will he get to marry the girl of his dreams, Katherine Hamilton? Will he become famous and popular? The answer to most of these questions is no…

Debut sensation Christian O’Connell is back with more hilarious adventures of Spike, super-star radio DJ… and trouble-prone ordinary kid.The World’s youngest DJ is still the talk of the town. A town that’s about to turn against him.Radio Boy and his team, Artie and Holly, are back and continue to broadcast live to the world from Spike’s garden shed.Then, following a shock split from Nan, Grandad Ray comes to stay. Spike decides to cheer him up by inviting him onto the show. He becomes an instant hit with the listeners and Spike keeps him on as a new team member.But things get really awkward when Spike realises Grandad Ray only has three stories and keeps telling them over and over again. Spike is forced to sack his own Grandad, who swears vengeance on his own grandson. Grandad Ray is the world's most competitive man and he always plays to win – at any cost…

Debut sensation Christian O’Connell is back with more hilarious adventures of Spike, super-star radio DJ… and trouble-prone ordinary kid.The World’s youngest DJ is still the talk of the town. A town that’s about to turn against him.Radio Boy and his team, Artie and Holly, are back and continue to broadcast live to the world from Spike’s garden shed.Then, following a shock split from Nan, Grandad Ray comes to stay. Spike decides to cheer him up by inviting him onto the show. He becomes an instant hit with the listeners and Spike keeps him on as a new team member.But things get really awkward when Spike realises Grandad Ray only has three stories and keeps telling them over and over again. Spike is forced to sack his own Grandad, who swears vengeance on his own grandson. Grandad Ray is the world''s most competitive man and he always plays to win – at any cost…

Recent revisionist scholarship has argued that representations by white “outsider” observers of black American music have distorted historical truths about how the blues came to be. While these scholarly arguments have generated an interesting debate concerning how the music has been framed and disseminated, they have so far only told an American story, failing to acknowledge that in the post-war era the blues had spread far beyond the borders of the United States. As Christian O’Connell shows in Blues, How Do You Do? Paul Oliver’s largely neglected scholarship—and the unique transatlantic cultural context it provides—is vital to understanding the blues. O’Connell’s study begins with Oliver’s scholarship in his early days in London as a writer for the British jazz press and goes on to examine Oliver’s encounters with visiting blues musicians, his State Department–supported field trip to the US in 1960, and the resulting photographs and oral history he produced, including his epic “blues narrative,” The Story of the Blues (1969). Blues, How Do You Do? thus aims to move away from debates that have been confined within the limits of national borders—or relied on clichés of British bands popularizing American music in America—to explore how Oliver’s work demonstrates that the blues became a reified ideal, constructed in opposition to the forces of modernity.

Recent revisionist scholarship has argued that representations by white “outsider” observers of black American music have distorted historical truths about how the blues came to be. While these scholarly arguments have generated an interesting debate concerning how the music has been framed and disseminated, they have so far only told an American story, failing to acknowledge that in the post-war era the blues had spread far beyond the borders of the United States. As Christian O’Connell shows in Blues, How Do You Do? Paul Oliver’s largely neglected scholarship—and the unique transatlantic cultural context it provides—is vital to understanding the blues. O’Connell’s study begins with Oliver’s scholarship in his early days in London as a writer for the British jazz press and goes on to examine Oliver’s encounters with visiting blues musicians, his State Department–supported field trip to the US in 1960, and the resulting photographs and oral history he produced, including his epic “blues narrative,” The Story of the Blues (1969). Blues, How Do You Do? thus aims to move away from debates that have been confined within the limits of national borders—or relied on clichés of British bands popularizing American music in America—to explore how Oliver’s work demonstrates that the blues became a reified ideal, constructed in opposition to the forces of modernity.

The hilarious, revealing and surprisingly moving story of what happened when famous UK radio DJ, Christian O'Connell, risked everything by moving to Australia in midlife - to find himself a complete unknown in a country where, he soon discovered, no one wanted to hear him on the radio.