Here Comes the Fun (eBook)

A Journey Into the Serious Business of Having a Laugh

Ben Aitken

'What Aitken writes about fun is worth reading' Mail on Sunday
'Irresistible' Christopher Somerville, author of The January Man and Walking the Bones of Britain
'A great book' Simon Rimmer, Sunday Brunch
'Aitken's writing is always a delight' Madeleine Bunting, author of The Seaside

Are you getting enough? Bestselling travel writer Ben Aitken wasn't.

Increasingly flat and decreasingly zen, Ben gave boredom the boot and stress the cold shoulder by embarking on a whimsical journey into the serious business of having a laugh.

He did a pilgrimage in Spain, a summer camp in Kent, and a cruise of the Baltic with 2,000 grannies. And when he wasn't on the road, he searched for merriment at home: by giving bridge a go, volunteering a chance, and gardening a crack of the whip.

By incorporating the thoughts of key thinkers and boffins, Here Comes the Fun offers a satisfying balance of the playful and the profound, the serious and the silly, the daft and the deep.

Ben Aitken was born under Thatcher, grew to 6ft then stopped, and is an Aquarius. He was conceived by a nurse and a shipwright, grew up in Portsmouth and was in a boyband for a spell in the noughties, then worked as a carer throughout his twenties. He is the author of six books: Dear Bill Bryson, A Chip Shop in Poznan (a Times bestseller), The Gran Tour ('Both moving and hilarious', Spectator), The Marmalade Diaries, Here Comes the Fun and Shitty Breaks. He writes for The Guardian and The Times, was the TCG Travel Journalist of the Year in 2024, and is an occasional lecturer at the University of Portsmouth.