> Skip to content
  • Published: 2 June 2008
  • ISBN: 9780091901516
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $52.00

Fatty Batter

How cricket saved my life (then ruined it)



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.

  • Published: 2 June 2008
  • ISBN: 9780091901516
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $52.00

About the author

Michael Simkins

Michael Simkins trained at RADA. He has appeared in more than 70 plays, stage highlights include A View from the Bridge at the National Theatre as well as musicals Chicago and Mamma Mia. He also directed Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends at the Greenwich Theatre. He has made countless TV appearances - recent credits include Foyle's War and My Family - as well as turns on the silver screen in such films as Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy. He has worked with luminaries as diverse as Anthony Perkins, John Malkovich, Michael Gambon and Buster Merryfield. He lives with his actress wife Julia in London.

Also by Michael Simkins

See all

Praise for Fatty Batter

Extremely funny - whether or not you know your bails from your balls

Daily Mail

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

At last the work of genius that will finally bring the long-suffering cricket addict a measure of understanding in the world. A wonderful and very funny book

Sir Tim Rice

You read the wonderful Michael Simkins with a mixture of horror and delight

David Hare

Michael writes about disaster, humiliation, rejection and ridicule - the hilarious truth

Nicholas Hytner

An instant classic

Stephen Fry

One of Britain's funniest writers

Daily Mail

It is wonderfully written - full of wit, gags, self-deprecating asides and a pure, unfettered understanding of a man's limitations - and it talks to all of us. You should buy it. You really should go out straight away and pick up a copy. It'll make you feel so much better

All Out Cricket

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

Brilliantly witty

Ed Smith, Daily Mail

One of the funniest sporting memoirs ever

Sunday Telegraph

Almost painfully funny

Observer