What do you think?
Rate this book
I, Maybot: The Rise and Fall
'The Maybot is rebooted as strong and humble. Stumble for short.' 'Kim Jong-May awkward and incredulous as journalist asks question.' 'Supreme leader produces pure TV Valium on The One Show.' Throughout 2017 John Crace, the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer, has watched Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts to remain strong and stable - and, indeed, Prime Minister. He coined the term 'Maybot' for her malfunctioning public appearances. And now, in this edited collection of his unremittingly witty sketches, he tells the full story of Theresa May's turbulent first year in Westminster. As waspishly hilarious as Craig Brown's diaries in Private Eye, I, Maybot is essential and hysterically funny reading for anyone trying to make sense of our crazy political year.
197 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 31, 2017
17 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 14, 2019
This was my second stab at reading this book in the last 12 months or so. I gave up the last time, as the so called humour/ satire seemed crass, in poor taste and frankly tedious. It was at the expense of a woman who had the job from Hell, thanks to her fair weather predecessor (he lost his balls courtesy of Hurricane Nigel).
A few months down the line, and deeply troubled at the state of the nation and its apology for a government, perhaps this sketch of a robotic PM aspiring to be a humanoid might strike a sounder chord for me? I’d give it another go.
The book had much the same effect on me second time round. But I took a few deep breaths and carried on reading, teeth duly gritted. For the first half of the book I was mentally scoring it at 1/ 2 stars. Then it seemed to take a turn for the better and my jaw became less rigid.
The author is the parliamentary sketch writer of the Guardian and I suppose the odd column of this stuff might vaguely amuse for a while but in book form it is a little too much. It does have a few redeeming features for me. I liked the way Crace turned from farce to the deadly serious as he wrote of ghastly tragedies occurring on Theresa May’s watch and which she generally handled with great dignity and statesmanship. (some more so than others – terrorist attacks, Grenfell Towers fire).
There is also some value for me in being reminded of events as they occurred, chronologically, and how these were handled, or usually mishandled, at the time.
I do however have serious reservations about the book – what is its purpose apart from poking fun at someone who happens to be the prime minister and the future patron saint of all of us of a clumsy disposition who drop clangers from time to time. What or who is its natural audience?
Who can I recommend it to? The anarchist, definitely. The fascist, certainly, and with some cause, (Old Tess banging on every few seconds about us poor little peeps needing strong and stable government, for Gawd’s sake!!!) We can’t and won’t get that from her and this bankrupt political system of ours which is no longer fit for purpose. Here is a rather sorry epitaph to Democracy which I must conclude from this exercise of Crace’s, is massively over-rated.
Crace concludes his book “Be careful what you wish for” (alluding to T.M’s apparent wish to be PM, first expressed in childhood). I’d say to him “Be careful what you write”.
A few months down the line, and deeply troubled at the state of the nation and its apology for a government, perhaps this sketch of a robotic PM aspiring to be a humanoid might strike a sounder chord for me? I’d give it another go.
The book had much the same effect on me second time round. But I took a few deep breaths and carried on reading, teeth duly gritted. For the first half of the book I was mentally scoring it at 1/ 2 stars. Then it seemed to take a turn for the better and my jaw became less rigid.
The author is the parliamentary sketch writer of the Guardian and I suppose the odd column of this stuff might vaguely amuse for a while but in book form it is a little too much. It does have a few redeeming features for me. I liked the way Crace turned from farce to the deadly serious as he wrote of ghastly tragedies occurring on Theresa May’s watch and which she generally handled with great dignity and statesmanship. (some more so than others – terrorist attacks, Grenfell Towers fire).
There is also some value for me in being reminded of events as they occurred, chronologically, and how these were handled, or usually mishandled, at the time.
I do however have serious reservations about the book – what is its purpose apart from poking fun at someone who happens to be the prime minister and the future patron saint of all of us of a clumsy disposition who drop clangers from time to time. What or who is its natural audience?
Who can I recommend it to? The anarchist, definitely. The fascist, certainly, and with some cause, (Old Tess banging on every few seconds about us poor little peeps needing strong and stable government, for Gawd’s sake!!!) We can’t and won’t get that from her and this bankrupt political system of ours which is no longer fit for purpose. Here is a rather sorry epitaph to Democracy which I must conclude from this exercise of Crace’s, is massively over-rated.
Crace concludes his book “Be careful what you wish for” (alluding to T.M’s apparent wish to be PM, first expressed in childhood). I’d say to him “Be careful what you write”.
August 14, 2019
Somewhere, in a heap o’ obsolete tech, thrashing around in a pile of motherboards and asimov circuits, is the Maybot, pinned below a series of prototype Asmios, stubbornly attempting to force herself back into action to deliver Brexit. Her mind, having been bruised by several ravenous crowbots, is somewhat on the fritz, as she mutters, in a croaky voice, “strong and r-r-r-exit means st-st-st-exit-it”, and the numbers on her barcode fall off. Overhead, an old P45 wafts from a nearby town, its inhabitants unemployed as a result of 34,000 businesses closing in preparation for no-deal, a sight that spurs the Maybot into more action, as she uses the last of her powers to free herself from the Asimo crush. On her feet, she looks steelily into the middle distance, then steps forward to enact the will of the British people, trips over a loose nut and smashes her asmiov circuits to pieces. She is too toxic to be used as scrap.
August 18, 2018
This book is funny and tragic; it's infuriating and absurd.
Unfortunately, that's mostly not because of the writing. It's because of the subject matter: British politics from the Referendum through to Grenfell, via the most cataclysmically inept election campaign in at least a century and a half. It's the story, in other words, of Theresa May.
[no, seriously: she called an election when she was more than 20 points ahead in the polls, and she managed to lose her majority. And it wasn't because the polls were wrong - she just haemorrhaged supporters day by day because she was so incomprehensibly awful].
Given the stupidity and the bare-faced deceitfulness of all the major actors in this period (Labour get some mentions too...), and the sheer absurdity of events, laughter and anger are inevitable. To this background condition, Crace sadly adds little; his wit is at the level of nicknaming people in such Wildean, surgically-satirical ways as "Dim" and "Dull". The degraded modern genre of parliamentary sketch - in which the sketch writer (a writer of political comedy who is neither a political expert nor in any way a comedian) essentially tells us what happened, throws in a few insults, and then if necessary makes up some other stuff that didn't happen but is allegedly funnier, without making it clear what's real and what isn't (in this case it's easy to tell: the really ridiculous stuff is real life) more obstructs than elucidates the terribleness of the facts. More generally, because this is culled from his at-the-time newspaper sketches, awkwardly intersticed with posthoc linking material in italic, the author is never able to bring out any compelling narrative.
This was probably done for reasons of time. I can't help but think a much funnier and more engaging book could have been created, even given the author's limitations, if he'd started from scratch, writing a coherent story, complete with both foreshadowing and retrospection (both largely missing here), reworking the raw material of his sketches to fit into that larger structure. As it is, this almost feels more like notes for a book rather than a book - like a artist's reference sketch hastily scribbled down on site, rather than the finished painting.
[The subtitle tries to create a narrative: "the rise and fall" (of May). But we only see the final step of her rise (from Home Secretary to Prime Minister), and we don't see her fall (because she's still going! somehow!).]
All that said, I'll re-iterate: it's funny, and its infuriating, and it's tragic and absurd. It may not add much to the facts, but it does take the reader down (recent) memory lane and points out the salient moments, more or less (although the commitment to the weekly format means that many important episodes are underserved because they happened too quickly or clashed with some other story that week, while dull bits have to be spun out into entire chapters because nothing else was going on). The bitesize, disjointed approach does make it an easy casual read, for when you want a couple of pages at a time.
I got it as a gift - I imagine most readers of it did. It's the sort of book that's hurriedly rushed to the presses to make a christmas present - not worth making a fuss over, but with just enough there that nobody will complain. While it could have been much better, given the raw material at hand, I can't say that it didn't basically fulfill its function. Most people who were given it, if they tried reading it, probably basically enjoyed it. So did I, mostly. I guess that's not to be scoffed at.
Fuller thoughts can be found on my blog
Unfortunately, that's mostly not because of the writing. It's because of the subject matter: British politics from the Referendum through to Grenfell, via the most cataclysmically inept election campaign in at least a century and a half. It's the story, in other words, of Theresa May.
[no, seriously: she called an election when she was more than 20 points ahead in the polls, and she managed to lose her majority. And it wasn't because the polls were wrong - she just haemorrhaged supporters day by day because she was so incomprehensibly awful].
Given the stupidity and the bare-faced deceitfulness of all the major actors in this period (Labour get some mentions too...), and the sheer absurdity of events, laughter and anger are inevitable. To this background condition, Crace sadly adds little; his wit is at the level of nicknaming people in such Wildean, surgically-satirical ways as "Dim" and "Dull". The degraded modern genre of parliamentary sketch - in which the sketch writer (a writer of political comedy who is neither a political expert nor in any way a comedian) essentially tells us what happened, throws in a few insults, and then if necessary makes up some other stuff that didn't happen but is allegedly funnier, without making it clear what's real and what isn't (in this case it's easy to tell: the really ridiculous stuff is real life) more obstructs than elucidates the terribleness of the facts. More generally, because this is culled from his at-the-time newspaper sketches, awkwardly intersticed with posthoc linking material in italic, the author is never able to bring out any compelling narrative.
This was probably done for reasons of time. I can't help but think a much funnier and more engaging book could have been created, even given the author's limitations, if he'd started from scratch, writing a coherent story, complete with both foreshadowing and retrospection (both largely missing here), reworking the raw material of his sketches to fit into that larger structure. As it is, this almost feels more like notes for a book rather than a book - like a artist's reference sketch hastily scribbled down on site, rather than the finished painting.
[The subtitle tries to create a narrative: "the rise and fall" (of May). But we only see the final step of her rise (from Home Secretary to Prime Minister), and we don't see her fall (because she's still going! somehow!).]
All that said, I'll re-iterate: it's funny, and its infuriating, and it's tragic and absurd. It may not add much to the facts, but it does take the reader down (recent) memory lane and points out the salient moments, more or less (although the commitment to the weekly format means that many important episodes are underserved because they happened too quickly or clashed with some other story that week, while dull bits have to be spun out into entire chapters because nothing else was going on). The bitesize, disjointed approach does make it an easy casual read, for when you want a couple of pages at a time.
I got it as a gift - I imagine most readers of it did. It's the sort of book that's hurriedly rushed to the presses to make a christmas present - not worth making a fuss over, but with just enough there that nobody will complain. While it could have been much better, given the raw material at hand, I can't say that it didn't basically fulfill its function. Most people who were given it, if they tried reading it, probably basically enjoyed it. So did I, mostly. I guess that's not to be scoffed at.
Fuller thoughts can be found on my blog
February 21, 2020
This book is supposed to be a satire version of the events from the resignation of David Cameron through all the problems Theresa May had with Brexit and controlling her own Cabinet. I was looking forward to a funny account of these events as a lighter look at politics but it was not what I thought it was going to be. I figured that lots of MP's would be ridiculed in the book but it was really just a book aimed at picking on Theresa May with very few digs at anyone on the opposition benches. It also featured her as a real robot with system overloads, fried circuits and reboots, but it also made up a lot of incidents and distorted actual events, with things like policy advice from plants, which is not what I was looking for. The humour fell totally flat and I found it really annoying and dull. I won't be reading any more of these parody things, that's for sure.
March 3, 2018
4.5 stars
Terrifyingly satirical, if it's possible to add satire to today's Brexit reality. What a terrible state of affairs. Where has all the political talent gone - or have they always just been winging it? Where will it all lead and how have they got away with this for so long without people being out on the streets (in protest - not homelessness)?
Got this a freebie for being a Guardian member - first of the freebies I've wanted to read
Terrifyingly satirical, if it's possible to add satire to today's Brexit reality. What a terrible state of affairs. Where has all the political talent gone - or have they always just been winging it? Where will it all lead and how have they got away with this for so long without people being out on the streets (in protest - not homelessness)?
Got this a freebie for being a Guardian member - first of the freebies I've wanted to read
December 28, 2017
This is very clever and amusing stuff. It does make you pause occasionally however and realise what a complete shambles UK politics is in. You have to laugh or you may be tempted to cry !
February 14, 2018
Covering a selection of his sketches from June 2016 to July 2017, this collection by Guardian writer John Crace (with additional contextual notes that are often themselves bitterly entertaining) is both an amusing look at a malfunctioning Prime Minister and a worrying indictment of just how shambolic British politics is.
His 'Maybot' is a humorous (and fitting) portrayal though for me, his cack-handed Kim Jong-May seems more accurately damning. There's nothing quite like incompetent control-freakery - "only the Conservatives can combine the brutality of a Stalinist purge with the low comedy of a Carry On film."
Individually, these pieces about May, her clumsy Cabinet and her political opponents are entertaining and generally funny, but mashed together and read in a few short sittings, the overall effect is more depressing than hilarious.
Just look at this extract from the May 22nd 2017 entry - 'Maybot policy reboot ends in an embarrassing interview meltdown':
'You've broken your promises on reducing the deficit and immigration,' [Andrew] Neil concluded. 'Why on earth would anyone believe a word you say?'
'This election is all about trust' Kim Jong-May replied in one of the greatest acts of self-harm seen on TV. 'That's why I've called the election.' After promising not to.
By the end of the 30 minutes, all that was left of the Maybot was a puddle on the studio floor. A cleaner came in and mopped up. The slops were sent back to Downing Street in a taxi.
It really is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry. Probably both.
His 'Maybot' is a humorous (and fitting) portrayal though for me, his cack-handed Kim Jong-May seems more accurately damning. There's nothing quite like incompetent control-freakery - "only the Conservatives can combine the brutality of a Stalinist purge with the low comedy of a Carry On film."
Individually, these pieces about May, her clumsy Cabinet and her political opponents are entertaining and generally funny, but mashed together and read in a few short sittings, the overall effect is more depressing than hilarious.
Just look at this extract from the May 22nd 2017 entry - 'Maybot policy reboot ends in an embarrassing interview meltdown':
'You've broken your promises on reducing the deficit and immigration,' [Andrew] Neil concluded. 'Why on earth would anyone believe a word you say?'
'This election is all about trust' Kim Jong-May replied in one of the greatest acts of self-harm seen on TV. 'That's why I've called the election.' After promising not to.
By the end of the 30 minutes, all that was left of the Maybot was a puddle on the studio floor. A cleaner came in and mopped up. The slops were sent back to Downing Street in a taxi.
It really is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry. Probably both.
April 5, 2019
I was given this book as a Christmas present in 2017. It was written in 2016 and 2017, and covered the Brexit vote, the Prime Minister's reaction to it, some insights into the political posteuring of all parties, the hastily called general election where Theresa May was re-elected without a clear majority, and the subsequent pathetic attempts at having a meaningful pan-European dialogue.
Ok, I could try and be politically correct and give some bland, intellectual response to all of this.
I write this approximately 18 months after this book was written. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. "Brexit" is the single most stupid concept ever conceived in the history of civilized civilization. If you want me to give you 100+ rational reasons for this, just ask, I will, very easily. But our inability to ask, our inability to listen to the answers to the questions that we won't ask, our reticence as a species to enter into gentle, sensible conversation with one another as supposedly caring human beings. That's what really breaks my heart. I will always have hope - but that notion, it's really being stretched at the moment. As a species, we're not being particularly smart, are we? Come on, let's talk, eh? Silence, from entrenched positions, isn't going to get anywhere when you think about it, is it?
Ok, I could try and be politically correct and give some bland, intellectual response to all of this.
I write this approximately 18 months after this book was written. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. "Brexit" is the single most stupid concept ever conceived in the history of civilized civilization. If you want me to give you 100+ rational reasons for this, just ask, I will, very easily. But our inability to ask, our inability to listen to the answers to the questions that we won't ask, our reticence as a species to enter into gentle, sensible conversation with one another as supposedly caring human beings. That's what really breaks my heart. I will always have hope - but that notion, it's really being stretched at the moment. As a species, we're not being particularly smart, are we? Come on, let's talk, eh? Silence, from entrenched positions, isn't going to get anywhere when you think about it, is it?
July 15, 2018
This is a collection of newspaper pieces with some linking text (I suppose you should probably say they have been curated...). They are, undoubtedly, witty, and amusing. A pleasant way of spending five or ten minutes. Strung together they tend to reflect their subject: British has become obsessed with a single subject, but debate around that is wafer thin. Instead of a serious discussion of the pros and cons of EU membership you get the trials and tribulations of a bunch of apparently hopeless politicians (May probably appears to be the worst because she has the most exposure). I repeatedly thought about two things whilst reading this book - Samuel Johnson's accounts of the house of commons (especially their title 'Debates in the Senate of Lilliput') and Alex Ferguson's definition of ambition. Sir Alex says likes people who are interested in what they might achieve in a job, not people who just want to get one level higher up. All we seem to have are politicians in the latter category, more worried about their electoral prospects than about what they can do for the people they govern. So whilst the book is fine in its way as Paul Simon once said 'I don't find this stuff amusing anymore'.
January 28, 2018
I suspect I need to read John Crace on a regular basis in the Guardian (that's if they add another couple of hours to the standard 24 day to find time to do things like read newspapers). I started out finding this book funny and annoying my husband by reading bits out loud to him. Love the idea of Larry the Downing Street cat needing therapy for abandonment issues, for example.
But shoving all these witty sketches together made it less than the sum of its parts. It became repetitious. ("Yes, yes, we've had that joke.")
It's interesting to have a record of the opinions at the time though. E.g. the Maybot not lasting the week. Virtual all politicians and commentators failed to take note of the glass cliff theory. Women are allowed to remain in charge when things are going really, really badly; when things are resolved (in our case, when we've left the EU) the female leader falls (or is pushed) off the cliff.
However, a good bit of light reading just in case you start getting carried away thinking Brexit is all going to be ok and need bringing back to reality with a bump.
But shoving all these witty sketches together made it less than the sum of its parts. It became repetitious. ("Yes, yes, we've had that joke.")
It's interesting to have a record of the opinions at the time though. E.g. the Maybot not lasting the week. Virtual all politicians and commentators failed to take note of the glass cliff theory. Women are allowed to remain in charge when things are going really, really badly; when things are resolved (in our case, when we've left the EU) the female leader falls (or is pushed) off the cliff.
However, a good bit of light reading just in case you start getting carried away thinking Brexit is all going to be ok and need bringing back to reality with a bump.
September 17, 2025
I enjoyed another of this authors books so was looking forward to this effort. Sadly I found this book to be lacking in humour and actually to be just mean spirited. The author presents Theresa May as the Maybot, a malfunctioning robot lacking in empathy, intelligence, political nous or humanity really.
The humour didn`t really land for me, I am far from an admirer of May and goodness knows there is plenty to criticise her about but she picked up an impossible job after dodgy Dave cut and run after after messing up the Brexit referendum and was basically a decent person (well, as compared to who came after) overwhelmed by circumstances and the deluge of hate unleashed by the referendum, a moot point maybe but rather May than the horror show of Corbyn.
There are some moments of humour such as the interventions of the pot plants and an imagined conversation between the late Queen and Prince Charles after a sparse Queens speech "let`s fawk awf to Ascot" (which is pretty much what HM did)
Overall , unlike some of the authors other work, I cannot recommend this.
The humour didn`t really land for me, I am far from an admirer of May and goodness knows there is plenty to criticise her about but she picked up an impossible job after dodgy Dave cut and run after after messing up the Brexit referendum and was basically a decent person (well, as compared to who came after) overwhelmed by circumstances and the deluge of hate unleashed by the referendum, a moot point maybe but rather May than the horror show of Corbyn.
There are some moments of humour such as the interventions of the pot plants and an imagined conversation between the late Queen and Prince Charles after a sparse Queens speech "let`s fawk awf to Ascot" (which is pretty much what HM did)
Overall , unlike some of the authors other work, I cannot recommend this.
October 17, 2020
I give this a 3.5.
I really enjoy reading John Crace's articles in the Guardian, and I was impatient waiting for him to write more! I like how the chapters were quite bit sized, and of course with the usual wit. I find the last few years have been like dogs years, politically. SO much has happened (and keeps on happening). This was a funny reminder of what the May "era" was like (seems a long time ago now! and look how far, or not far we have come!).
I really enjoy reading John Crace's articles in the Guardian, and I was impatient waiting for him to write more! I like how the chapters were quite bit sized, and of course with the usual wit. I find the last few years have been like dogs years, politically. SO much has happened (and keeps on happening). This was a funny reminder of what the May "era" was like (seems a long time ago now! and look how far, or not far we have come!).
January 26, 2018
This is a collection of the Guardian's parliamentary sketches from June 2016 to July 2017, with some new linking texts to cover those articles omitted and to give some background. These sketches are sharp and painfully accurate (maybe that's just my bias) to the point where they become more like painfully-straightforward reportage (post-satire?).
November 27, 2018
A satirical look into the post Brexit world and how Theresa May is attempting to handle it. I don't follow European politics closely enough to have enjoyed or appreciated this as much as I'd have liked to, but still liked the humor and learned more than the author probably planned most readers to about the subject matter from this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2025
solo un año después del referéndum y pensar que eso era el máximo nivel de surrealismo distópico que se podía alcanzar. lo único que hacía tragable el brexit era ver a políticos profundamente inútiles (si jeremy corbyn tú también) atrapados por las consecuencias de sus propios actos, sin que hubiera habido tiempo a que permease al público general. ahora sí que gotea.
November 17, 2017
A great collection of sketches by the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer John Crace, who coined the term "Maybot" for the current British PM. A must-read for anyone who can see the humorous side of British politics in the age of Brexit.
March 4, 2018
A very witty, acerbic and enjoyable read. It would have even more enjoyable had it been a work of fiction but knowing that the Maybot clings to power and Brexit is still a reality does take the edge off.
December 11, 2018
A humourous newspaper column, poking fun at politicians may bring a wry smile over the morning toast and coffee, but ram a year's worth into a book and the jokes soon wear very thin. Disappointing and tedious.
January 3, 2018
Funny and sums most of what happen well, but isn't very consistent and sometimes seems to lose the thread.
March 10, 2019
Strong and stable sketch writer tales of Brexit chaos. Spoilers, it doesn't get solved.
May 8, 2019
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. I did both
November 12, 2021
I enjoyed this. Quite funny and quite cutting.
November 24, 2021
Fine collection of Guardian sketches which document the transition era. Agony on every page.
January 27, 2024
Cute for a few pages but then the concept gets tired and dull.
April 30, 2024
Very hadd to follow as non native British. The humor got lost. But probably for natives could be of interest.
December 30, 2025
had forgotten how absolutely awful May was. one in aline of appalling Tory PMs
April 3, 2018
As satirical views of recent politics it is great. Not really my sort of thing, but it made me think.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews