Harry Thompson - Penguins Stopped Play

Review by Brian Lowen on show 18th March.
Eleven village cricketers take on the world.

It seemed a simple enough idea : assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the world. Except – hold on a minute – that’s not a simple idea at all. And when you throw in incompetent airline officials, amorous Argentine colonel’s wives, cunning Barbados drug dealers, gay Australian waiters, over-zealous American anti-terrorist police, idiotic Welshmen dressed as Santa Claus, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and armies of Antarctic pitch-invading penguins you quickly arrive at a lot more than you bargained for!

The book is written by Harry Thompson, a writer of many TV comedy series including “Have I got news for you” and he was the captain of the Captain Scott XI, which he ran in his spare time and was named after the Captain Scott of Antarctic fame because he came second in his exploits to reach the South Pole.

As well as being a good travelogue of their journey across the 7 continents of the world, the book describes the hilarious scrapes they get into on the way. The book should really be read by a cricket lover as each match on their tour is described in detail and I’m afraid I flipped over some of these pages.
British Airways comes off rather badly in this book due to their incompetent handling of the bookings for their flights around the world and according to Harry are the world’s second worst airline, only beaten by Yemen Airways!

Unfortunately Harry Thompson died of lung cancer at an early age shortly after completing this book.
Review by Brian Lowen

show 18th March 2010.

My guests this week are Brian Lowen, back from holiday and Maggie Perkovic. Books being reviewed are Nothing to Lose by Lee Child, Penguins Stop Play by Harry Thompson
Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire) by Vikas Swarup, The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and at last, a review I've been waiting to do for months, Martina Cole's 'Close'.

Maggie hope you had a lovely Mothers day. I had a wonderful, relaxing, last minute 2 night break at St Michaels Hotel in Falmouth. We had an amazing suite, lounge, huge bathroom, and a sea view over the Lizard peninsular. I have to add that the staff were lovely and friendly too.

Hope everyone has recovered from their celebrations of St Patricks Day, happy birthday for yesterday Debbie Blewitt.

Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire) by Vikas Swarup I have to say Maggie I haven’t read the book but I watched the film which I thought was very clever. One reviewer said: Great Movie, Even Better Book. Have there been any films which were better than the books they were based on? anybody have any nominations for that?
Penguins Stopped Play by Harry Thompson, wondering what you thought of this one Biran. I read some excerpts of this last year and found it really funny and I am not a cricket fan! I actually found this book in January this year in a charity shop near my mums. I bought it for my brother who doesn’t read but likes cricket – I must ask him if he read it as I told him it was funny.