Room Service

Synopsis

Frank Moorhouse and his alter ego, Francoise Blase, are at their mordant best. Their wit, satire and keen eye for detail are finely honed as they travel at home and abroad, savouring the persecution inflicted by bell captains, barmen and tour guides - together with the endless buffeting of cultural differences. Moorhouse and Francois Blase like to travel light. Carrying a typewriter, a six-pack and a healthy amount of hedonistic humor, the Australian pair tour the globe's underbelly in these brilliant pieces, exchanging barbs, witticisms and stinging insights on the ways of people. The tales dissect the anti-art of traveling and provide incisive narratives that alternately wink at their subjects and then 'whonk' them on the back Aussie style. Moorhouse also makes a solitary journey back to the 1950s, to recapture the rhythms and idiom of school and family life in a poignant account. A hilarious spoof of travel books Room Service is a collection of stories, or rather dispatches, from a feckless Australian travel writer to his long-suffering editor.