The Dark Tourist

Ever since he can remember, Dom Joly has been fascinated by travel to odd places. In part this stems from a childhood spent in war-torn Lebanon, where instead of swapping marbles in the schoolyard, he had a shrapnel collection — the schoolboy currency of Beirut. Dom’s upbringing was interspersed with terrifying days and nights spent hunkered in the family basement under Syrian rocket attack or coming across a pile of severed heads from a sectarian execution in the pine forests near his home.

These early experiences left Dom with a profound loathing for the sanitized experiences of the modern day travel industry and a taste for the darkest of places. In this brilliantly odd and hilariously told travel memoir, Dom Joly sets out on a quest to visit those destinations from which the average tourist would, and should, run a mile. The more insalubrious the place, the more interesting is the journey and so we follow Dom as he skis in Iran on segregated slopes, spends a weekend in Chernobyl, tours the assassination sites of America and becomes one of the few Westerners to be granted entry into North Korea. Eventually Dom journeys back to his roots in Beirut only to discover he was at school with Osama Bin Laden.

Funny and frightening in equal measure, this is a uniquely bizarre and compelling travelogue from one of the most fearless and innovative comedians around.

Author Biography

Best known for his multi-award winning, global-smash-hit comedy series Trigger Happy TV, Dom’s other comedy television credits include This is Dom Joly, World Shut Your Mouth and Fool Britannia.

Dom also makes TV travel shows including Dom Joly’s Happy Hour and Dom Joly’s Excellent Adventure in which he respectively travelled the world drinking too much and went on a mammoth road trip through Lebanon and Syria. His most recent travel series How Beer Changed the World sold to fifty-nine countries.

Dom is also an award-winning travel writer and has visited over a hundred countries. His books include The Dark Tourist, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, The Downhill Hiking Club: A Short Walk Across the Lebanon and Such Miserable Weather: An English Staycation.

His latest book The Conspiracy Tourist, sees him travelling the world hanging out with conspiracy theorists and will be published in November 2023. He will tour the UK in 2024 with a new stage show based on this book.

Dom has appeared on a multitude of shows such as I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, The Island with Bear Grylls, Splash, Pilgrimage and Celebrity Hunted to name but a few.

He has also directed, produced and starred in innumerable adverts and podcasts including an Audible Original American travel series and Earworm, his chart-topping prank phone call podcast.

He has made pop videos for Blur, Ian Brown, Betty Boo, Peter Hook and Deco.

He is a columnist for Cotswold Life and has written extensively for most major newspapers.

He is the voice of Jack FM radio and hosts a regular Sunday radio show- Dom Joly’s Sunday Session 12-2pm.

He is also an ambassador for Save the Children.