Charlie (Charlton) Brooker is a British comedy writer and cartoonist. His brand of humour tends to be savage and profane, with some surreal elements. He is a co-founder and creative director of the media company Zeppotron .

Brooker's early work was as a writer and cartoonist for PC Zone magazine in the mid-1990s, including the comic Cybertwats and a column entitled "Sick Notes", where Brooker would insult anyone who wrote in to the magazine.

In early 1998, one of Brooker's one-shot cartoons caused the magazine to be pulled from the shelves of many British newsagents. The cartoon was entitled "Helmut Werstler's Cruelty Zoo" and professed to be an advert for the aforementioned theme park, which the creator, a comical Teutonic psychologist, had created in order that children can take their violent impulses out on animals rather than humans. This was accompanied by photoshopped pictures of children smashing the skulls of monkeys with hammers, jumping on a badger with a pitchfork, and chainsawing an orang-utan, among other things.

The original joke was supposed to be at the expense of the Tomb Raider games, known at the time for the sheer number of animals you could kill. The original title, "Lara Croft's Cruelty Zoo", was nixed for copyright reasons, and unfortuately this took the point of the joke away. The plan was therefore not to print the cartoon at all, but unfortunately this never happened and the February 1998 issue of PC Zone duly shipped with the cartoon in place. Cue massive controversy.

From 1999 to 2002 he penned the satirical TVGoHome website, a regular series of mock TV schedules published in a format similar to that of the Radio Times, consisting of a combination of savage satire and surreal humour.

Brooker currently writes an irreverent TV review column entitled "Screen Burn" for The Guardian newspaper's entertainment supplement The Guide. On October 24, 2004, he wrote a column on George W. Bush and the forthcoming 2004 US Presidential Election which concluded:

John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley, Jr. - where are you now that we need you? [1]

The flippant remark was picked up by the Drudge Report, which ran it as a headline. The matter was immediately referred to the Secret Service in Washington DC, who allegedly contacted both Drudge and Brooker over what was regarded by critics of the comment as an illegal (in the U.S.) incitement to murder the President. The Guardian quickly withdrew the article from its website and published and endorsed Brooker's apology. [2]

Brooker is the co-writer (along with Chris Morris) of the sitcom Nathan Barley, which is due to be broadcast in 2005.