The Conspiracy Tourist
BOOK REVIEW
The Conspiracy Tourist - Dom Joly
A hysterical start, not matched by a distracted and perfunctory second half
Recommended to me by a client after an offhand conversation about flat earthers, I succumbed to my childish ebullience for a new read - despite already having two books on the go - and bought a copy the next day. Joly is an English comedian I’d not heard of before but immediately stamps his intent for the book to be comically entertaining in the opening pages.
“Leaked CIA documents reveal that pandemic deniers have micropenises.”
In his opening, Joly recounts seeing stickers plastered around his countryside town claiming the Covid pandemic was a hoax and any critical thinker would recognize it as such. Angered by the thought of his close friend, who was at the time hospitalized on a ventilator, Joly went around town plastering his own stickers over the originals: “Leaked CIA documents reveal that pandemic deniers have micro penises.”
His curiosity for conspiracy theories spikes when, one random day, his hitherto normal, dog-walking neighbour begins to spout outlandish claims about a New World Order and how Covid vaccines are a mind control tool used by lizard leaders. Joly then decides to embark on an exploration of famous conspiracies, exploring their origins and how they gain a following. What follows are several page-turner chapters covering ideas from whether Finland actually exists (Joly flies there to verify) to the famous Roswell UFO incident (which still earns the town significant tourism). His wit is present throughout the book, but in the first 50 pages it’s simply hysterical. One particular anecdote about a prank an airline pilot would play on his passengers had me in stitches in a public cafe, a wonderfully rare reaction to the written word.
That story, though brilliant, had little to do with conspiracies however, and sadly several chapters devote more time to Joly’s cultural observations of his destinations rather than the madness of the ideas surrounding them. One passage on Glastonbury has almost no link at all to the book’s title, other than having sat beside a couple who held some bizarre worldviews. This is a shame, as Joly does so well up front to grip the reader’s attention but the book transforms into a jovial travel journal with the occasional conspiratorial reflection.
“Bird Truthers claimed that the United States government ‘extinguished’ more than 12 billion birds between 1959 and 1971 and replaced them with surveillance drone replicas. These drones now watch us every day.”
This criticism hardens when, upon meeting a flat earther, Joly hasn’t even researched the idea enough to defend a globe-shaped model or to challenge the individual in any way. This is certainly the nadir of his ‘investigations’. This is one of several missed opportunities to interrogate a conspiratorialist, where instead Joly treats the conversation as a networking event’s small talk. A similar anticlimax follows the attempted interview of Alex Jones at his house, Joly being kicked off the property without a word exchanged. Many editors would have removed this section from the manuscript.
I will commend Joly for sending me down several engrossing rabbit holes, not least researching the outstanding Birds Aren’t Real theory, for which I am considering becoming a public advocate. Although he deviates too often from his core focus, Joly’s light heartedness is endearing and one wants to cheer on his mischievousness. After all, there aren’t many people who can say they brought a square flat earther to one of the world’s four corners just to witness the reaction.
-NP, February 2025
Reading notes from The Conspiracy Tourist