Shop Horror

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:) - Rated
Side-splittingly funny, I keep it on my desk and open the book at random every morning to start the day with a bit of hilarity.

My personal favourite: Kumquat Mae, the vegetarian restaurant!

A nation of paronomastic shopkeepers - Rated


The fun and froth of the British High Street is brilliantly captured in this lovely photobook of quirkily named shops. 'Wooden it be nice' furniture, 'Blazing saddles' cycles, 'Change of a dress' clothes, 'Pane in the glass' windows and 'Lettuce eat', sandwiches will give you an idea of how groaningly wonderful these shops are.

The book is basically one photo to a page, a straight-on shot of the shop centred on the page with a geographic caption. A simple clean layout that lets the photos speak for themselves but unfortunately every few pages there are spreads (twenty-four in all) devoted to a particular shop with a really messy layout of several photos and captions. So it's four stars and no cigar.

This is surely a genre that will produce a volume two and to help future retailers get in that book how about: 'Go away' travel, 'Happy to meat you' butchers, 'Give them a brake' cycles, 'We knead your body' sauna and a sort of predictable 'The end of window pains' glaziers.

Another book I've enjoyed along the same lines as 'Shop Horror' is 'Welcome to Britain' (ISBN 0755314476) a photo celebration of the worst in British lifestyles and the landscape. A tongue-in-cheek treasure.

HIGH STREET COMEDY - Rated
I take photos of shop fronts with wacky names and Blackpool has a lot of 'em.Amazingly not one is shown in this book yet we had until new owners destroyed the name a chip shop called GOOD FRY DAYS.The only way it can be seen now is on my FLICKR photostream.
You can actually think this sort of stuff up as you walk into the town to alleviate the boredom:an electrical supply shop could be the British OHM Stores! I thought this up as I read in this book that British Airways tried to sue a hairdressers shop for calling itself British Hairways.
One of the cleverest I ever saw is just in the next street and its a cosmetics shop with a set of traffic lights as a logo.Its called The Beauty STOP Hair We GO-so you get double the comedy here.
Volume 2 should visit my town and take a photo of The Frying Squad and the Last Orders Inn (really a restaurant pretending to be a pub) and Real Eyes (whose cards say "do you realise its time to have an eyetest!) Unfortunately my opticians has a real boring name.I suggested an economical one I C U.but sometimes you don't know whether others may have used it

Very, very funny. Top of the Shops - Rated
This book succeeds where other humour books fail. So many offerings in this category have an amusing title or premise but they fail to live up to the promises these make. On flicking through, you find they just offer one joke repated on every page.

'Shop Horror' differs and succeeds by offering so much more than a collection of the country's funniest shop names. On many pages there is an image of a shop with a genuinly inventive name. Sherlock Homes estate agents, Criminal Records record shop, The Bitter End off-licence, Sherwood Florist flower shop; there's nearly 200 of them and every one is a gem. However, the book's strength lies in the extra features that add so much more value and keep you reading. The author takes you inside selected shops to introduce the owners, the customers and to paint a picture of work and life there. More importantly, he tries to discover how these establishments came by their names. Even more fun is offered by the entertaining themed groupings of shops. Film-based store names such as Austin Flowers florists, Dye Hard hair salon and Brief Encounter lingerie shop are great fun, as are the shops based on TV shows (A Pine Romance, Open All Flowers) and pop groups (Bananarama etc). There's even more value added by the features on Britain's punniest town (Brighton), shops that have recently closed (including the fantastic Napoleon Boiler Parts) and name suggestions for people about to open a new shop (Bike To The Future anyone?).

This is more than photos of Britain's funniest shops, this is a feature-packed tour of the world of amusing shops with so much to read, you'll enjoy it again and again.

Very, very funny.

Groan, cringe and laugh out loud! - Rated
The quirky sense of humour that the British are famous for is captured perfectly in this book - I just love it!