The Last Flannelled Fool
  • Published: 15 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780091927554
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $29.99
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The Last Flannelled Fool

My small part in English cricket's demise and its large part in mine

Formats & editions
EBook
15 Jul 2011
Paperback
15 Apr 2012
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A hilarious odyssey in search of some answers about life and cricket from the author of the bestselling Fatty Batter

Michael Simkins is the ultimate Sunday cricketer – passionate, obsessive, technically inept, and hopelessly deluded. When an injury rules him out of an entire season, not only might it spell the end of his long career, he is faced more immediately with a summer aimlessly wandering garden
centres and listening to The Archers.

He decides instead to set off on an odyssey across the counties of England in search of that golden time in his youth when his passion for the game was first kindled. It's a journey that begins in May in light drizzle at the birthplace of cricket, takes in the burial site of his favourite ground (now a Marks & Spencer) and even stops along the way to flirt with the love child of WG Grace and Kerry Katona that is Twenty20. It ends with the ultimate cricketing zenith – returning to the field of play to bowl an over to Freddie Flintoff in fading light in front of a capacity crowd. So can cricket still bring comfort and meaning to his life or is Old Father Time about to call for Michael's bails?
  • Published: 15 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780091927554
  • Imprint: Ebury Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:
Share…

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

The Rules of Acting
Detour de France
Fatty Batter
What's My Motivation?
See all

Praise for The Last Flannelled Fool

One of those rambling, picaresque, unashamedly nostalgic travel books that so enliven a summer afternoon... funny, crafty and written with extraordinary verve

Mail on Sunday

An amiable, sharp-eyed companion

Independent

A book you're certain to love

James Walton, Daily Mail

Hugely entertaining

We Love This Book

A funny, well-observed obituary of English cricket's eccentric soul

Telegraph

Light, whimsical, well-observed

Daily Telegraph

Simkins is a lively conversationalist, full of the jokes, anecdotes and wisdom from many years' matches

Daily Mail