Penguins Stopped Play

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Sketching each stop with deft relish, Thompson almost launches another genre - the picaresque comic memoir of sporting incompetence. Jimmy Mulville, the company's managing director, asked Thompson to produce this venture, which first appeared in 1990 as Have I Got News For You. He was the creator of the dark humour television series Monkey Dust, screened between 2003 and 2005. 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.

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. Following his move into television, he produced Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, Harry Enfield and Chums and Monkey Dust, and co-produced Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Thompson begins by reflecting on Scott, fighting his unwinnable battle with Amundsen and the elements. Rising to the level of producer, he was responsible for the production of long-established show The News Quiz as well as Alexei Sayle's new comedy series, Lenin of the Rovers (1988). Most of it is relatable to anyone who’s tried to organise any kind of a disparate group in any kind of joint endeavour, although I did find myself checking the fielding positions chart to remind myself where deep midwicket is.Sometimes I will listen to test match special on the radio and I have been to watch the odd day of a test match. The early part of the book, before the world tour, was a little less boring, telling of the establishment of the club, a sort of Oxford/BBC/Surrey take of people who live cricket but love themselves more. Well worth a read for a good chuckle and you don’t necessarily need to know your silly mid on from your Cow Corner. 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.

Once you get over the ridiculousness of cricket, this is a funny story full told with whit and a whiff of hilarious exaggeration. Born in London, Thompson was educated at Highgate School and Brasenose College, Oxford, then joined the BBC as a trainee in 1981.

It ends with an emotional reflection on the life of someone that fell in love with the game of cricket despite not being very good at it, and whom had a jolly time and a lot of experiences travelling the world playing it as a hobby and leading a team of characters some of which took the game more seriously than others and some of whom deliberately try to lose games. He attended the private, fee-paying school Highgate School before going on to study History at Brasenose College, Oxford. Still, I can imagine what it is like to play a full day of village cricket though I have never even bothered to sit and watch a full game. This book has the ability to make you look very silly as you stifle a smirk on the bus so that people will not think you are mad - while reading on another joke makes you try and stifle the urge to laugh out loud causing snot to shoot from one's nose, making you look extemely silly!