The Green Red Green

Red Green was recycling material long before the green revolution got underway. Look at the autmobiles he’s driven over the years. Many of those were assembled using the same basic method employed for The Green Red Green: by welding together the surviving bits of some old wrecks. In this case, we’re talking about the three Red Geen books published long ago by other, inferior publishers: Duct Tape Is Not Enough, a collection of newspaper columns by Red Green’s alter-ego Steve Smith on surviving middle age; Red Green Talks Cars; and Red’s literary debut The Red Green Book, a souvenir of the TV show.

The selection for his best-of pretty much made itself. Out went the Steve Smith columns with once-topical references; out went the material from The Red Green Book that was in the voices of the other characters (he’s been carrying those bums for too long) and out went very little from the perenially hilarious Cars. The resulting mass of pieces have been well-shaken into a new mix; re-edited to new levels of sharpness and hilarity, and updated so that, for example, jokes about hairstyles now feature Russell Brand and not Rod Stewart. And the perfectly competent illustrations from the previous books have been replaced by much better, incompetent ones by the author, so that the look of this book very much resembles How to Do Everything.