It seemed a simple enough idea at the outset: to assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the globe. Except -- hold on a minute -- that's not a simple idea at all. And when you throw in incompetent airline officials, amorous Argentine Colonels' wives, cunning Bajan drug dealers, gay Australian waiters, overzealous American anti-terrorist police, idiot Welshmen dressed as Santa Claus, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and whole armies of pitch-invading Antarctic penguins, you quickly arrive at a whole lot more than you bargained for. Harry Thompson's hilarious book tells the story of one of those great idiotic enterprises that only an Englishman could have dreamed up, and only a bunch of Englishmen could possibly have wished to carry out.
Accolades
Shortlisted for British Book Awards: Sports Book of the Year 2007.
Reviews
Praise for Harry Thompson and Penguins Stopped Play: -- . 'Actually completely brilliant' -- Ian Hislop 'A real gold standard sense of humour' -- David Baddiel 'Rare, clever, creative ! a maverick, pushing boundaries with outrageous jokes' -- Guardian 'Crammed with sharp observation, comic and cruel characterisation and a great many very good jokes... Gloriously funny and life-affirming' -- Daily Telegraph 'Surely the funniest book ever written about the English addiction to cricket...a beautiful tale of classic British humour, self-deprecation, great courage' -- Daily Mail 'Even people who despise cricket will adore this' -- Times 'Very funny ...he fills his warm-hearted book with a satisfying selection of tales' -- Sunday Times 'Funny and inspiring...Thompson writes with a novelist's sympathy about a wonderfully mixed bunch of characters' - Hugh Massingberd -- Literary Review 'As funny as you would expect from the writer of Have I Got News For You' -- Daily Express 'Harry Thompson wrote with such verve and wit that he could have made a trip round a multi-storey car park into an adventure' -- Celia Brayfield, The Times 'A very funny, peculiarly British travel book' -- Markus Berkman, Daily Mail
Author Biography
Harry Thompson is the inventor and editor of many TV comedy series including Have I Got News For You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He is the author of acclaimed bestsellers, including Peter Cook: A Biography. His most recent book is a historical novel, This Thing of Darkness. He worked as a producer at Talkback TV and in his spare time ran an infamous cricket team, the Captain Scott XI. He died in November 2005.
