Fatty Batter

The hilarious tale of one podgy boy's dreams on the outside edge of a cricketing life from 'one of Britain's funniest writers' (Daily Mail)A fat boy with a passion for sweets and a loathing for games, the young Michael Simkins finds in cricket a sport where size doesn't necessarily matter and a full-blown obsession is born. Now in middle-age, he still harbours the somewhat deluded belief that the England middle-order might usefully benefit from his hard-earned skills. From impromptu Test series played with his dad in the family sweetshop through to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates, Fatty Batter is the bestselling and hilarious story of one man's life lived through cricket.

Short-listed for British Sports Book Awards: Best Cricket Book 2008 Short-listed for Costa Biography Award 2007

“An instant classic”

Once you've read this account of one man's love affair with cricket, you'll never want to read another ghosted autobiography by a Pietersen or a Vaughan again - incompetence and failure is far more fun -- Michael Atherton
-- Stephen Fry
The childhood recollections, suffused with warmth and spangled with pain and humour, are the book's unique selling point. Lovely stuff Daily Telegraph
Simmo may be a shockingly average amateur cricketer, but when it comes to self- deprecating wit and telling a good anecdote, he's as sprightly as Garry Sobers in his prime ... anecdotes and quirky characters hurtle down at us like yorkers bowled by a fast bowler that I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to name ... an entertaining read indeed Sunday Times
Michael writes about disaster, humiliation, rejection and ridicule - the hilarious truth -- Nicholas Hytner

Michael Simkins was born in 1957 and spent his childhood in a sweetshop in Brighton. In 1966 he saw his first cricket match on the TV, and from that moment he was hooked.When he hasn't been playing, watching or dreaming about cricket, Michael has spent his time acting. He has appeared in countless plays and musicals in the west end, most recently as Billy Flynn in Chicago, and also features regularly on TV and the silver screen, usually playing unsuspecting husbands, police sergeants or experts. He lives with his wife, the actress Julia Deakin, in north-west London, and still plays cricket to a worryingly low standard all over the Southern Counties.

This study addresses many of the key issues raised by the increasing expansion of the EU. Analysing the traditional 'Community method' of espansion and finding many shortcomings with its ability to handle future enlargement, Chris Preston explores: the past experience of enlargement and the lessons that can be drawn the impact that enlargement has had on EU policies, institutions and the new member themselves * the likely future developments in the enlargement process Focusing on the Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries, this book will be essential reading for students, specialists and practitioners of European Politics.

This hilarious story of one man's lifelong obsession with cricket takes readers from the early awkward days as a fat boy growing up in a Brighton sweet shop to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates still chasing the sweet spot. In this story, cricket offers a shelter from life's irksome realities and a place in which to quietly dream. That place is a peculiarly English arcadia of occasional wondrous beauty, forests of comforting statistics and the endless life-affirming rituals of defeat, humiliation and disappointment--the perfect net practice for life.

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