Everything you wanted to know about one hit wonders. Packed with information, interviews with the one hit heroes and snippets of lyrics from those songs everyone loves to hate, this is the perfect book about this very special element of pop culture.

The Wombles is the first ever Wombles book and introduces the stern but kindly Great Uncle Bulgaria; Orinoco, who is particularly fond of his food and a subsequent forty winks; general handyman extraordinaire Tobermory, who can turn almost anything that the Wombles retrieve from Wimbledon Common into something useful; Madame Cholet, who cooks the most delicious and natural foods to keep the Wombles happy and contented; and last but not least, Bungo, one of the youngest and cheekiest Wombles of all, who has much to learn and is due to venture out on to the Common on his own for the very first time . . .

The Wombles have just gratefully returned to their burrow on Wimbledon Common. They had had to leave because heavy lorries thundering up and down the nearby road threatened to make the roof of the burrow cave in. However, now that the Wombles are safely back, there is another problem they have to contend with. It seems that the humans have realised they have an energy crisis and are throwing much less away. The Wombles' supplies begin to run low. What can the Wombles do? It is time for EMERGENCY SPECIAL PROJECTS - with DIY king Tobermory in charge.

Meet the original recyclers, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common, as they make good use of the rubbish humans throw away. For the first time, read all the Wombles stories in one. Follow the young Wombles as they take their first steps outside the Womble burrow to collect rubbish in the big wide world. Marvel at Tobermory's incredible inventions from what humans would consider 'trash'. And discover a whole Womble community as they head off around the world for even more adventures. This collection contains all six of the Wombles books, beautifully illustrated by Nick Price: The Wombles The Wandering Wombles The Wombles at Work The Invisible Womble and Other Stories The Wombles to the Rescue The Wombles Go Round the World

This is the extraordinary story of Elisabeth Beresford, creator of The Wombles, the furry, fun-loving recyclers of rubbish which became a children’s publishing and television sensation in the 1970s. What drove this imaginative and prolific writer of children’s books to invent The Wombles? From her birth in Paris in 1926 to her death in the Channel Islands in 2010, Beresford’s working life was led to the full, driven by the fear of debt. Married to the TV and radio sports commentator, Max Robertson, and with two children, Elisabeth’s life was never dull but always uncertain. In addition to writing over 140 children’s books, she wrote romantic fiction for women’s magazines, became a regular contributor to the Today program, Woman’s Hour (BBC) and Woman’s World (Central Office of Information). As a journalist she interviewed a fascinating range of people from politicians and film stars to children in the remote Australian Outback. With the publication of The Wombles, and subsequently the enchanting BBC films, Elisabeth found fame and for a very brief moment, fortune. This is the first biography of ‘Mrs Womble’ as Elisabeth was known by millions of fans. Written by her daughter with insider knowledge and access to private family archives - diaries, letters, photographs and family memories - this book relates the remarkable and often hilarious life of one of the 20th century’s most successful children’s authors.

The perfect way to meet the Wombles - in a gorgeously illustrated, snowy, sparkly picture book. A wombling Merry Christmas to everyone!

The Wombles live in a beautifully snug, well-ordered and cosy burrow underneath Wimbledon Common - the perfect base from which to sort and recycle all the rubbish that unthinking humans constantly drop. But the Wombles' peaceful and harmonious existence is suddenly under threat. The heavy lorries that thunder along the roads near the Common make the burrow shake and tremble so much that it is no longer safe for the Wombles to live there. With a heavy heart, Great Uncle Bulgaria decides that the Wombles will have to move from the burrow that they have lived in for many, many years. And it is up to young Bungo and Orinoco to bravely sally forth and try to locate a new home for the Wombles . . .

The eighties was a golden era for British pop: Radio One served as the soundtrack of the nation; the chart run-down on Sunday evenings was compulsory listening - ditto watching Top of the Popsand reading Smash Hits. It also saw the launch of the Now That's What I Call Music series. In the States, the arrival of MTV helped usher in what became known as the 'Second British Invasion', echoing the success of the Beatles twenty years earlier. Wired For Soundtells the remarkable story of the great eighties British bands (and Kajagoogoo) and how their music captured the nation's imagination: the more radical beginnings in the early eighties (the new romanticisms of Duran and Spandau, the 'protest pop' of early Wham!); the full pomp of their mid-eighties success (the worldwide tours, the glamorous video shoots, the ubiquitous 'Choose Life' and 'Relax' T-shirts); and their fall from the top of pop's pedestal (the splitting up of Wham!, Boy George's drug problems). Wired for Soundwill describe the subsequent descent to Band Aid II (Bros, Wet Wet Wet, Stock, Aitken and Waterman), which bookended the low point of the pop music that followed. Wired For Sound will be the affectionate celebration of both a musical youth and the era when young guns went for it. This is a book for anyone who grew up reading Smash Hits, soundtracked their teenage years on C90 cassettes and remembers a time when it really mattered who was number one.

Television past, as LP Hartley might have once said, is another country. And, in the early 1980s it certainly was a different beast. There were still only three channels to watch; the evening's programmes finished with the playing of the national anthem; and the biggest prize on TV was not Chris Tarrant's million pounds but a speedboat on Bullseye . . . But as Tom Bromley suggests in this funny and warming memoir, all that was about to change: The 1980s saw the end of the original golden era of television, and the beginnings of TV as we know it today. In 1982, Channel 4 became the first new terrestrial channel for almost twenty years and by the end of the decade, Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television was vying to become Britain's first multi-channel provider. The result of all this was that slowly but surely, British viewers had more choice than ever before and the cost of this choice was the erosion of television as a shared national event. And no-one felt this change more deeply than Tom Bromley. Television played a large part in Tom's childhood. His first word was 'two', as in BBC Two, and his earliest childhood memory is seeing Johnny Ball at a church fete. With great humour and affection, Tom Bromley tells the story of a childhood spent with his three siblings and that other all-important family member; the television set.

'Fabulously readable' STEPHEN FRY 'Brilliantly told, the fascinating life of one of Britain's greatest songwriters' MATT LUCAS 'A brilliant, funny, emotional book' DAVID QUANTICK Described variously as a 'polymath', a 'renaissance man' and 'one of the most colourful characters in the music business', Mike Batt has led an extraordinarily vibrant and challenging life that has been full of both glorious victories and bitter failures. For better or for worse, he is a man who has always lived life on his own terms. Idiosyncratic but mainstream, complicated but compassionate, steadfastly maverick in spirit but avowedly commercial in outlook. He is a man of great contradictions, but even greater talent. After starting out in the music business as a teenager, Batt shot to fame in the early 1970s for his part in the creation of the Wombles pop group. But this success proved to be just the beginning as he then went on to work with various artists as a songwriter, composer and producer, including Art Garfunkel, George Harrison, Cliff Richard, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Katie Melua. Featuring cameos from some of the biggest stars in the business from Paul McCartney to Prince, The Closest Thing to Crazy takes us not only on the rocky (and classical) journey of Mike Batt's life but also on a tour around the inside of his mind.