Some Fun Facts About VICE Writer Joel Golby, Who Has a Book Out This Week

VICE Staff Writer Joel Golby has written a book.

If you've come within slapping distance of his social media in the past two months, you will know this. The self-promotion has been endless. He boarded a flight this morning and tweeted about it for the 900th time because he's not going to be able to promote it for the 12 hours he's in the air. The VICE and Noisey teams use Slack – a sort of glorified MSN Messenger – to chat at work, and Joel's screen name for a long time, seen only by his 12 colleagues, who knew very well he had a book coming out, was "pre-order Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant" (the name of his book).

But that's fine – he's written a book, and it's genuinely great! That's a big deal and we're all very proud of him and he deserves to talk about it incessantly. What's not great is that he hasn't written anything about that book for VICE.com, so we're going to do some promo for him, without his knowledge. The book reveals quite a lot about Joel – his feelings about the M&M's mascots, his aptitude for Scrabble – but not everything.

Here's some of the stuff we've gleaned about our friend over the nearly five years we've worked with him.

– He is, like, taller than he looks in pics. Maybe it's a head size thing?

– He yells when you're at the pub and too hungover for hair of the dog.

– Joel Golby shags hand sanitiser.

– Joel Golby has an extremely low tolerance for people speaking on the phone near him.

– He wrote a book.

– He would like you to buy his book.

– It is a good book. Why would we lie? We employ him.

– "Bong me to death, Big Ben. Bong so loud you deafen me, then muddle my insides with reverb. Bong me so my brain melts and turns to a grey formless mash. Bong us out of Europe. Bong us, brave and united, into the future. Bong, bong, bong. Clang, clang, clang. Big, Big Ben." – Joel Golby, published author, 2017.

– The angriest I have ever seen him was when someone did a bad shit in the work toilet. Like, he didn't speak for about two hours.

– He loves magic and magicians it's fucking weird.

– I still remember the day he got hot. It was a great day.

– He has definitely eaten a worm.

– I have known Joel Golby for 4.3 years, and only time I have seen him express a genuine emotion was when Craig David performed his Justin Bieber cover at the VICE Christmas party in 2016.

– According to the tally I keep on a Post-It on my desk, Joel Golby is the most likely person in the VICE UK office to commit a murder.

– Joel Golby shags extremely long paragraphs.

– He looks like a man who would run very slowly, kind of like a wittier, sexier Hodor.

– Joel Golby once confused James Bay for James Blake, and to this day I still don't think he knows that they're different people.

– What happened to that football podcast he did? That was alright.

- We have an editorial Slack channel, and Joel's screen names on it have included "defecting from isis is self-care" and "YORKSHIRE PUDDING ULTRA"

– Despite him being a great writer, I'm pretty sure he's responsible for a terrible downturn of writing quality in most British broadsheets and online publications, because he basically legitimised "rambling on for thousands of words about the mundane" – and lots of shittier "humour" writers nicked it from him to do exhausting, whimsical listicles about, I dunno, the Oscars or something.

– After I replied to his Instagram Story, in which he was uncharacteristically enamoured with a baby, to point out how weird it was, he called me a "DICKHEAD". But 12 hours later he apologised, saying he was "very drunk and feeling defensive about the baby".

– Joel will go to the shop and bring you back your favourite biscuits without you even having to ask, and give you film photography advice when smashed (everyone looks hotter in black-and-white).

– He had a nu-rave phase at uni and, when pissed, his karaoke choices all revolve around NME's Essential New Artists from the year 2006.

Buy Joel's book, 'Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant', here.

@viceuk