Dom Joly

Dom Joly has been an eclectic columnist for The Independent on Sunday since 2004. Joly shot to fame in 2000 with his anarchic Channel 4 hidden-camera comedy programme Trigger Happy TV. He has since made television series for BBC and Sky One including, This Is Dom Joly and Dom Joly’s Happy Hour. His spoof autobiography, Look At Me, was published in 2004, and in 2007 he brought out Letters to my Golf Club, featuring his correspondences with golf clubs around the world.

Dom Joly: 'How are his wife and children?' Funny, that didn't come up

I am seriously outnumbered up here in the Canadian "wilderness" (I'm four miles from the nearest latte, so suck on that, Bear Grylls). It's not bears or beavers or moose that have the numbers – it's women. My four-year-old son, Jackson, and I are the only men in a lakeside cottage rammed to the pine beams with the opposite sex. There are cousins, aunts and grandmothers – a formidable group when all together. It's actually interesting to be able to observe them from up close, in their natural habitat.

Recently by Dom Joly

Dom Joly: Daddy's little jumper – it seems to run in the family

Sunday, 27 July 2008

My daughter stood, frozen, on top of the cliff. It was about a 20-foot drop down into the dark waters of Lake Joe and this would be the biggest jump of her life so far. From our speedboat below, her mother was screaming: "Don't let him force you to do it. You don't have to do anything you don't want to ..." Parker turned towards me. "Do you think I should do it, Dad?"

Dom Joly: A celebrity flip-flop: now my collection is complete

Sunday, 20 July 2008

I think my little boy Jackson is influenced by all the wrong role models. First it was the Tellytubbies, and he started making annoying nonsensical noises. Then it was the Power Rangers and he started to get quite violent – throwing shapes around the place and karate-chopping me when I was watching TV. Now it's gone one worse – he seems to be under the influence of Matthew McConaughyee, Maconahayee, Mcconahauhie... Mahogany – Matthew Mahogany, the Texan actor most famous for never wearing a shirt and nude bongo-playing sessions. Jackson has taken the Mahogany ethos to heart – he spends the days permanently nude wandering around our lakeside cottage deep in the heart of Ontario. Often he'll wander through the woods and down to the dock where he'll loll about naked and wave to passing boats.

Dom Joly: I now like golf and fishing. There's only gardening left

Sunday, 13 July 2008

Middle age is inexorably creeping up behind me. Another milestone was shattered yesterday when I went fishing and really enjoyed it... aaarrggghhh. First golf, then fishing – there's only gardening left before I shuffle off this mortal boil.

Dom Joly: Angry folk of Weston are as nothing next to killer cows

Sunday, 6 July 2008

I suffer from very severe aesthetic depression

Dom Joly: Tears before bedtime in Weston-not-so-super-Mare to shoot a golf DVD

Sunday, 29 June 2008

Having been away filming in somewhere glamorous like Nicaragua, it's always grounding to return to the UK. I was straight off the plane and down to Weston-super-Mare for a couple of days' filming for a golf DVD I'm making. I have a particular aversion to British seaside towns – we just can't seem to get them right. They're either places like Padstow that have been totally taken over by a TV chef and turned into a personality-based marketing opportunity or they're the windswept, penny-arcade, piss-stinking destinations of the desperate. Weston-super-Mare is one of the latter.

Dom Joly: Fated not to be wild: village life in modern Britain

Sunday, 22 June 2008

It's that time of year again: the village fete is upon us. Frantic telephone calls are exchanged: "Who is doing the tombola? Is Mrs Miggins bringing a cake?" It's a fun event that my kids enjoy and my dogs attempt to, until one of them snaffles said Mrs Miggins's cake and they have to be taken home in disgrace.

Dom Joly: Skiing down a volcano has a flaw. There's no snow

Sunday, 15 June 2008

As I continue my travels around Nicaragua, things get weirder and weirder. It's a problem when the people in a production team plan a trip from London without actually visiting the destination for a recce – things get slightly lost in the translation. For instance, someone "read" that there was an active volcano just outside the old capital of León, whose loose ash slopes could be snowboarded down. This was suggested to me as an option and, being a bit dumb, I agreed.

Dom Joly: Pass me the iguana virility soup – I'm due on set

Sunday, 8 June 2008

I'm in Managua, capital of Nicaragua and one of my new favourite places. I mainly love it because I haven't seen a single tourist here since I arrived and that's always a great sign. Everyone told me I was crazy to come here. "It's a war zone," they said ("they" are not that up on their geopolitical situations, but I nodded solemnly in agreement, to make me look tough).

Dom Joly: I'm making Hay while it rains. My wife, at home, is not happy

Sunday, 1 June 2008

I can barely remember my previous life before Hay-on-Wye. I distantly recall that I have children and a wife – is she Canadian or Japanese, definitely foreign, but from where?

Dom Joly: Hay, a middle-class Valhalla, complete with saucy vicar

Sunday, 25 May 2008

I'm down in Wales, working at the Hay-on-Wye literature festival for 10 days. I've tended to avoid festivals in the past, as I have an aversion to hippies and chemical loos.

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