Living Icon Lee Lin Chin Rages Against Our Utterly Cooked Housing Market

How do we know? Because she’s written a new book, darling, called ‘Iced Beer and Other Tantalising Tips For Life‘, and if you want to SKIP ALL THE VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION (this is wrong) and get straight into it, scroll down for a sneak peak.

“Lee Lin doesn’t understand the internet, so basically when she wants to tweet something, she has to call me on her landline – I like to believe that it’s a rotary phone – and then tell me what I have to tweet for her,” Leben told PEDESTRIAN.TV.

She really doesn’t have a mobile phone? “No mobile, no driver’s license, doesn’t know how to cook,” he says. So what does she know? “How to drink a good beer.”

This was too good an opportunity to pass up to determine once and for all if ‘cult heroine’ Lee Lin Chin and IRL Lee Lin Chin are one-and-the-same. Leben insists that they are.

“Lee Lin does have a crazy love of beer, she’s always talking about a different man that she’s dating, she’s got very hard line with her opinions,” he told us. “The only thing that’s different is she’s not violent.”

Dear @taylorswift13, I’ve been informed you have “bad bitches” join you on stage. I am Australia’s premiere “bad bitch”… let’s do this.

— Lee Lin Chin (@LeeLinChinSBS) November 24, 2015

For the book, the pair met up at a Surry Hills pub and spent eight hours necking beers and planning the whole thing out. Then they split up, wrote a few sections, sent them to each other, compared notes, and edit. Voila! Book done.

Leben mentioned that while the book is “mostly gags”, it does get serious in a few places – for example, where Lee Lin rails against Australia’s absolutely cooked housing market.

Have a read of the extract below, and try not to sob/calculate how long it’ll take you to save up for a house deposit if you only gave up coffee (answer: seven billion years).

~ICED BEER AND OTHER TANTALISING TIPS FOR LIFE~

HOME LIFE 

Career, social life, boning it out: these are the things that people strive for. But a good home life is equally important.

You need a sanctuary, a fortress of solitude if you will… oh, that is good.

Note to self – trademark fortress of solitude.

A place where you can celebrate the self and get away from those annoying things known as… Dammit, what are they called again..? That’s right, ‘people’.

It will be traumatic but I do it for you, the people who have bought this book, giving me yet even more money, solidifying my wealth and keeping me from joining the unwashed masses.

Deep breath, pinch the nose and here we go.

BUYING A HOME 

To the youth:

Well, I feel for you, I really do, but it is possible to get into the housing market. You just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and, as Joe Hockey says, ‘get a better job’.

I myself started with nothing, just a small $1 million loan from my father.

I really did start with nothing, though. As one of seven children there was no way my family could help me out.

But when I bought my apartment fifteen years ago, it was a different time. Money went further and I’d been working for a long time.

After researching the current state of property it seems that my experiences are irrelevant in this day and age. That’s infuriating for me so I can’t even imagine how infuriating it is for the youth.

For once, I am at a loss, I have no advice for you other than to take to the streets. Protest this injustice.

The government can only ignore your voice for so long and if enough people speak out they’ll have to change things.

I’m truly sorry that I have no other advice to give. I guess you could take Malcolm Turnbull’s and have your rich parents buy you a house, but how many people actually have rich parents?

I should be Prime Chinister.

To the Old:

STOP BUYING HOUSES! YOU DON’T NEED EIGHT INVESTMENT PROPERTIES! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN INVESTING IN? YOUR FUTURE? I’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S IN YOUR FUTURE! DEATH!

RENTING 

If you’re young, it seems like this is your only option – renting a sub-par property from, statistically, a non-caring old white slumlord who owns three other domiciles just like it but who would never himself live in such squalor.

The rental market is an aggressive one. It’s like a UFC match, but instead of winning fame, money and a shiny belt, you win the most basic of human necessities – shelter.

When looking for a quality rental property you may feel that the quality shown is beneath you. Well, you’re correct. They all are. Do you really think you’ll find the perfect house? No one rents out the perfect house; they live in the perfect house and make it even more perfect by renting out their garbage flat.

Bring your hopes down. It’s going to suck.

Once you’ve found a property you don’t completely hate, you merely resent, it’s time to apply and lie through your teeth.

Make your referee a celebrity who is bound to impress the landlord, preferably a sexually experimental newsreader beloved by all. You have my permission to use me.

But Lee Lin, you may be thinking, wouldn’t they check that my reference is real?

Of course they will, and that’s where you get creative. Download my news broadcasts and sketches from the SBS website. There’s days worth of footage and thus plenty of dialogue to steal. Cut it together on your computer – which is a thing I assume is possible – and buy a second phone.

Or you could bribe the real estate agent. Whichever takes less time, I guess.

Watch Lee Lin & Chris record the audiobook behind-the-scenes:

Iced Beer and Other Tantalising Tips for Life by Lee Lin Chin & Chris Leben, Penguin, RRP $22.99. The audiobook, also narrated by Lee Lin Chin and Chris Leben, is available free with a 30-day trial from audible.com.au/LeeLinChin.

Photo: The Feed.