211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do is the essential life-skills handbook for bright boys of every age, featuring all the subjects they don't teach you at school or Scouts. If you reached adulthood without learning the exact rules of conkers, or how to take off your pants without removing your trousers, or how to put a ship into a bottle, this is the book for you. Divided into handy sections, this fascinating volume contains easy-to-follow tutorials and priceless tips on: / How to Be A Real Man -- including how to mow the perfect lawn and how to fight a bull -- with elegance; / Weird Science and Sideshow Physics -- spoon-bending, teach yourself mindreading, and how to lie on a bed of nails; / Bracing Outdoor Activities -- cowboy ropecraft, how to punt without looking a fool, how to head a ball, and how to make a boomerang come back; / Militant Cookery -- how to make your own pickled eggs, how to spit-roast and dress a suckling pig, how to make a proper pork pie; / Parlour diversions -- shadow puppets, easy tunes for the glass harmonica, and how to make a pinhole camera; / The Human Body -- how to make your hair stand on end, how to dissect a man, sumo wrestling for the beginner; / Those Useful Subjects Not Taught at School -- how to interrogate an uncooperative suspect, how to win money in a casino, and how to blag your way in philosophy, science, art, and psychology; / Gags, cons and practical jokes -- classic old and boggling new tricks, juggling, and unusual party pieces for the classroom, pub and restaurant table. Plus much, much more. This volume won't improve your morals or make you smell nice, but it will entertain and inform. So if you've always wanted to know how to tear a phone book in half, how to identify airline insignia, or the essential moves of Morris Dancing, this is the book you've been waiting for.

Author Biography

The son of a sex therapist and a sometime Dominican friar, Tom spent his early manhood in a desultory study of Fine Art and Philosophy at a cloistered university. He began his professional career with a number of false starts as a teacher, set designer, doublebass player, speechwriter, printer, toyshop manager, lyricist, wine waiter, City consultant, puppet maker, typographer, magazine editor, bandleader, portrait painter, radio reporter, cartoonist, and ghost writer for Cardinal Hume, before leaving the rat-race to spend more time with his slippers. Tom has written two acclaimed song books for children and his original ditty 'Pigs on Holiday' has been performed live, with actions, by Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein. He is a practising magician and member of the Magic Circle and in his spare time enjoys murdering Bach on the guitar.