Schitt's Misanthropy

THIS is the story of a failed attempt to write a bestselling toilet book. It grew out of a series of bibulous evenings in early 2003 at the Cheshire Cheese pub on Fleet Street with John Fothergill and Huw Davies, banker and barrister respectively.

The previous summer, Schott's Original Miscellany had been published. A slow burner at first, it had turned into a surprise hit, lodging itself in the books-of-the-year lists of many broadsheet commentators. That winter, the damned Schott was everywhere, with much syrupy praise heaped upon the originality of his concept.

Bollocks, we thought. Surely we weren't the only kids in Britain to have been handed down a schoolboy almanac, the staple Christmas-stocking filler of our dads' generation? Shorn of its twee typography and woodcuts, the Miscellany was nothing more or less than a Fifties kiddies' pocket book. Someone should knock up a parody.

A couple of months later, we'd developed a proposal for Schitt's Misanthropy, an evil twin to Schott's book. Where Schott's told you how to tie a bow-tie, Schitt's would show you how to do a noose; Schotts listed Latin abbreviations, while Schitt's had sexual deviancies; and so on.

Anyway, here is a surviving PDF of the material for the pitch. Note that the text on the foreword is slightly wonky, for some reason.

Schitt's (1.7MB)

The proposal went to Hodder Headline, who turned out to be very enthusiastic about publishing. Paydirt, we thought.

Then, at the last moment, it was noticed in a trade-press announcement that another publisher had a Schott's parody in preparation – duly released as the execrable Shite's Unoriginal Miscellany. And that was the end of that.

None of us is especially proud of the project, but it wasn't altogether bad – and those compiling sessions in the pub are fondly recalled. So here it is.