Henry Pratt, back home from National Service, is a man at last. As eager to prove it as he is to please, he is in at the deep end in his chosen profession - cub reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus. As trams and typewriters chatter to the echoes of Suez and Hungary, Henry finds himself in an exciting if bewildering world. His first scoop about a stolen colander is not quite as straightforward as he hopes. Misprints and chuckles abound as ever-hopeful Henry manages to fall foul both of typesetters and attractive women. And, in a profession not noted for kindness to the diffident, he is as prone to accident as practical jokes. Nothing ever goes quite right for Henry. So when the scoop of a lifetime finally comes his way it threatens to upset the family and complicate further his ever-hopeful love life.

Born into poverty, saddled with a born loser and parrot-strangler for a dad, short sighted and ungainly, young Henry Pratt doesn't exactly have a head start in life. But in David Nobbs’s brilliantly funny evocation of a Yorkshire boyhood, unathletic and over-imaginative little Pratt proves he can stick up for himself with the stoic good nature of the great British underdog

THE COMPLETE PRATT compiles the first three volumes of the misadventures of Henry Pratt, beginning with a brilliantly funny evocation of a Yorkshire boyhood in SECOND FROM LAST IN THE SACK RACE; Henry's first job is as a cub reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus, told in PRATT OF THE ARGUS, hailed by Sue Townsend as 'very funny'. Finally, in THE CUCUMBER MAN, Henry decides to take on a new role and a new challenge - working for the Cucumber Marketing Board in Leeds. Stumbling through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, Henry accumulates marriages and children along the way and THE COMPLETE PRATT is a touching and hilarious ride through a divided Britain...

It is 1957. The Suez Crisis has been and gone. Henry Pratt has completed his National Service and is putting his unsuccessful career as Thurmarsh's cub journalist behind him. Leaving Yorkshire, he's taking on a new role and a new challenge - working for the Cucumber Marketing Board in Leeds. Stumbling through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, Henry Pratt accumulates jobs, marriages and children on the way as he embarks on a touching, painful and hilarious switchback ride through a divided Britain.

Henry Pratt, back home from National Service, is a man at last. As eager to prove it as he is to please, he is in at the deep end in his chosen profession - cub reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus. As trams and typewriters chatter to the echoes of Suez and Hungary, Henry finds himself in an exciting if bewildering world. His first scoop about a stolen colander is not quite as straightforward as he hopes. Misprints and chuckles abound as ever-hopeful Henry manages to fall foul both of typesetters and attractive women. And, in a profession not noted for kindness to the diffident, he is as prone to accident as practical jokes. Nothing ever goes quite right for Henry. So when the scoop of a lifetime finally comes his way it threatens to upset the family and complicate further his ever-hopeful love life.

Kate Thomas was beautiful, intelligent, witty, passionate and sexy. Now, at the ripe old age of ninety-nine, she is trapped in a hospital ward of sad, mad and bad old women. She escapes by playing to herself the video of her life. What a life it has been. Her six marriages have ended in suicide, a husband's adultery, another husband's deportation as a dangerous alien, a union dispute, a murder, and a natural death. But Kate's journey through the twentieth century is also a search for the truth - about life, death, and which of her three sons murdered her fifth husband. This is a novel rich in memorable characters, from Kate's narrow but loving Welsh family to the wild members of an artists' colony in Cornwall; from Midland piston manufacturers to an investigative journalist whose own life cannot bear investigation.

Alan and Ange are on a train, heading for London. Alan is a philosophy lecturer, still a virgin at fifty-five; Ange a twenty-something, horoscope reading, darts groupie. They certainly don't expect their first casual meeting to lead to anything, but it does. Seizing the day, as they pull into Euston station, Alan asks Ange out to dinner and so begins the unlikeliest of liaisons. As they get to know each other, they are initiated into each other's worlds. From the claustrophobic confines of an Oxford College to the heady excitement of a big dart's match; from Liebfraumilch to Wittgenstein and everything in between. They even travel to Rome seeing many wonderful things as Alan learns to live for the moment and Ange to appreciate the finer things in life. But can they survive their differences in age and background? Are Alan's feelings the stuff of obsession and infatuation or is this true love? And what sort of philosopher is he if he cannot define and understand love? Told through the voice of Alan, this touching and hilarious story is much more than a tale about an unlikely couple. Ultimately, it is a story about the nature of love.

Guy Pratt's life as bass player to the stars. The book behind the successful comedy show. Guy Pratt came of age just as playing bass became cool, with the likes of Paul Simonon and Bruce Foxton. Having dallied with Funkapolitan, Pratt suddenly found himself on Top of the Pops and supporting David Bowie with smooth Australian outfit Icehouse. At a ludicrously young age Guy Pratt became a sought after bass player to the stars, finding himself crawling from studio to bar, from hotel to stadium portacabin with Robert Palmer, Womack & Womack, Bernard Edwards, Bryan Ferry and David Crosby, etc. The eighties were in their prime, and with a number of Crolla-suited appearances in windswept videos behind him, he was invited to join Pink Floyd for a series of stadium of extravaganzas to make Bono & co look fairly modest. Pratt has recorded with Madonna, and spent time in the studio with Michael Jackson. He was in The Smiths for a week, has travelled through customs in a wheelchair after a flight with Jimmy Page, and has lived to tell all. MY BASS AND OTHER ANIMALS emerges from the successful stand-up tour of the same name. It charts his journey from a Mod band in Southend to playing with Roxy Music at Live 8.

When pretty young TV researcher Nicky Proctor visits Cafe Henry in London's Soho, Henry Pratt's life changes forever. He becomes an instant star of the TV food quiz, A Question of Salt and before long he is given his own series, Hooray, it's Henry. The book of the series reaches Number Two. He's a celebrity. Henry Ezra Pratt has come a long way from his humble beginnings. But, as usual in Henry's life, things begin to go wrong. He incurs the deep hatred of rival celebrity chef Bradley Tompkins, with his bad manners, bad wig and no Michelin stars. A war is waged against him, escalating into plots and deceptions which threaten to destroy the reputation and career of the man dubbed 'The People's Chef'. It must be Bradley behind all this - or must it? On the domestic front, too, there are storms ahead. Henry is blissfully happy in his second marriage to Hilary, but he is sorely tempted by young Nicky and his lovely co-star Sally. Can he resist? Can he become a real man at last? Or will success spoil Henry Pratt for good...? We last met Henry Pratt in The Cucumber Man. Pratt à Manger continues the hilarious story of a great British underdog.

Claude has an intuitive faith in something splendid and feels at odds with his contemporaries. The war offers him the opportunity to forget his farm and his marriage of compromise; he enlists and discovers that he has lacked. But while war demands altruism, its essence is destructive