THE LITTLE BOOK OF ASBOS

ASBOLENT BEHAVIOUR FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

By Ed West

ISBN 1-905102-41-0
£2.99, PB

Here is a light-hearted look at this increasingly common social issue. Chapters cover the worst offenders, neighbours from hell, Asbo records, the problem with Asbos, and more! Sample Asbo recipients include: the lady in Bath who kept jumping off the town’s bridge into the river Avon...; the one who took to answering her front door in nothing but her underwear; and the ‘real Vicky Pollard’.

Negligent woman opens door to social order

Some people wouldn’t complain too loudly if the girl next door took to opening her front door in her underwear, but when a 27-year-old woman persisted in greeting her visitors with nearly nothing but a smile on, her neighbours in Lanarkshire had her served with an anti-social behaviour order. These days, if she doesn’t don more than her knickers when opening the door to the postman, she’ll end up in court and possibly jail. No doubt the postman isn’t too happy.

Still, you can’t please everyone in Britain, as Ed West illustrates in this account of Britain’s nightmare neighbours, families from hell and outright eccentrics, featuring Underdressed of Lanarkshire and many others besides. Bring on The Little Book of Asbos, a mercilessly scathing catalogue of the misanthropic Britons that the anti-social behaviour order has so far managed to apprehend.

With the number of orders already served at 4,000 and rising daily, Asbos are fast becoming as much as a staple of British society as talking about the weather and closing time punch-ups. We can’t go a day without reading about some disgruntled teen banned from wearing a hoodie or a belligerent hedge-grower ordered to cut down his sun-sapping Leylandii. They may be a bit more costly and a lot more complex than a spoonful of cod liver oil and a slap on the wrist, but Asbos are also a lot more amusing to read about.

From the 19-year-old who’s no longer allowed to advertise his gang’s name by shaving it into his head, to the woman banned from using rhubarb as a missile, The Little Book of Asbos has the kind of cast Eastenders would do well to emulate. It’s the intelligent toilet book of 2005.