Penguins Stopped Play

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A funny book with a few wonderful characters and some real miserable or downright horrible ones (Yes Greg I mean you). For that reason there should be something here for lots of readers to enjoy, although naturally it will appeal most to those of us who share Thompson's ridiculous passion for the sport. It excels when describing and discussing that most writable of sports, cricket; however, in describing the colourful characters and cities that Thompson encountered it is no less impressive. The topical animated series is dark and unafraid to tackle taboo subjects such as paedophilia, taking us to Cruel Britannia, a creepy place where the public are hoodwinked by arrogant politicians and celebrities. The idea that clever men with better things to do devote their spare time to playing cricket, badly, has become familiar.

The trouble with real life is the people in it some good and some bad and the whole uncertainty of the what the future will bring.And a final note - I may be a bit cheeky adding this to my kiwi connection shelf, but if breakfast in Devonport doesn't count I don't know what would. It’s an excellent book about a group of village cricketers who decided to tour the World, playing a game on each continent.

Then the last few pages are an abrupt dip into tragedy as one of the author’s team-mates dies, followed by the author himself. Thompson selected Angus Deayton to present the show, with Ian Hislop and Paul Merton as the team leaders. Harry Thompson really was a genius - his other book, This Thing of Darkness, was absolutely brilliant.When Berkmann left to start a splinter club, Thompson carried on captaining Captain Scott, so he has several more years of club memories to milk. Not to be deterred, they formed their own team away from the colleges, whose games were as much about farce and eccentricity as they were about actually playing to win. At first i didn't quite like it, too much emphasis on the cricket, but as the narrative moved on to the planned globe-trotting, the humour really started to shine. Another founder was Harry Thompson, who became a television comedy producer, novelist and biographer, and eventually wrote Penguins Stopped Play, about the club's attempt to play on every continent of the world. Still fewer have two or three, but this is what has happened to the Captain Scott Invitation XI, a wandering club formed by a gang of 1980s Oxford undergraduates whose wits were a lot sharper than their skills.

He attended the private, fee-paying school Highgate School before going on to study History at Brasenose College, Oxford. But a fourth battle, which could have been doomed too - to finish the book from his hospital bed - was triumphantly won. I am very sure that cricketing aficionados will get more out of this than I did, but don't let that stop the non-sporty folks from reading it too. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. The British Comedy Awards had planned to present him with a Jury's Award in December, with executive producer Michael Hurll stating that "It's sad he won't be there to receive it, but the legacy of his enduringly popular series lives on".Tales of a cricket tour, talk tales presumably, that should really be kept for more drunken nights of the tourists, and anyone else who was unlucky enough to get caught up in it. More compelling is the idea that a man with months to live would spend his days writing about playing cricket badly. They quickly become eager for adventures beyond the fields of Oxfordshire villages, and so Thompson starts to organise overseas tours for the team, eventually culminating in an epic round-the-world trip that will see the village minnows take on seasoned pros and even national sides across all seven continents (in England, Jamaica, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, and a hasty match in Antarctica, from where the title gets it name). Thompson's prose is vividly conversational, rolling along with hardly a colon or semi-colon, and it can be very funny.

This is one of the funniest books that I have ever read; but it also has some parts that raise other emotions. Fincham's comments were echoed by BBC Two controller Roly Keating, who stated that "Harry was a truly independent spirit and one of the funniest people I've ever known".It seemed a simple enough idea at the to assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the globe. You have to admire Harry as for many, many years he was a part of a cricket team full of frankly a-holes who didn't want to win and to me sucked all the joy out of the game. The programme was also criticised in some quarters on the grounds that it made light of prostitution.