Christopher Bliss: Writing Wrongs

Rob Carter plays Christopher Bliss, an inept village novelist from Shropshire who churns out two to three books a day on single sheets of paper. Rather than playing him as a pompous literary snob, Carter pitches the character as an overgrown schoolboy who is entirely in love with his own clunky sentences. Bliss treats writing as a practical craft governed by ridiculous principles: books should open by thanking the reader, dialogue improves whenever you include the letter Z, and Herman Melville was an amateur for failing to include proper manners in Moby-Dick.

The bulk of the set is a reading of Get a Brain, a five-chapter saga published through Rymans stationery shop about a bullied library monitor named Andrew Shivers. Between chapters, Bliss detours into literary reviews, scolding Karl Marx for treating The Communist Manifesto like a gripping narrative without bothering to include a ghost.

NextUp Comedy recorded the 57-minute performance in August 2017 at The Voodoo Rooms during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, releasing it to streaming services in early 2018 under the direction of Martin Gillon. Carter had previously won the 2012 Musical Comedy Awards before pivoting away from musical stand-up to develop Bliss across live rooms and online shorts.

The staging relies heavily on pantomime audience participation. Bliss trains the room to shout “ruddy hell” whenever a phrase strikes them, and when an audience member suggests the restaurant chain “Zizzi” to satisfy his phonetic obsession, Carter stays fully in character, visibly thrilled by the help.