The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures

The Sunday Times Humour Book of the Year.

Anyone can be a success, but it takes real and original genius to foul up big time. These are the all-time greats, Gods in the field of failure, surreal artists, who spurn mere drab success ('I'm a winner, Lord Sugar') to explore the vast, magical, life-enhancing possibilities of getting it wrong. Any of us could make a mistake, but these great souls can turn the simplest everyday task into a scene of jaw-dropping wonder. These are the immortals.

Stephen Pile, President of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain and author of the number-one best-seller The Book of Heroic Failures, takes us on an all-new and mind-bendingly hilarious tour to celebrate the most spectacular and absurd failures of the last twenty-five years.

Failure is everywhere. There are 235 stories in total spread from the Outer Hebrides to America, Ireland, Australia, Europe and Africa. The Syrian entry, for example, holds the world all-comers record as the driver who got most lost under satnav direction (5000 miles).

From the most driving test failures (959), the most pointless election (in Dakota, in which not even the mayor voted), the worst robbery (when two different sets of bank robbers struck simultaneously) and the worst mugger (who left his victim $250 better off), to the holidaying rugby team of fifty-somethings from Dorchester who, due to a mis-translation, ended up playing the top team from Romania live on state TV, this is the ultimate book to make you feel better about yourself and the world around you.

The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures fails miserably at failing to be a runaway success amongst funny books.

Stephen Pile was a journalist for far too long and is the author of The Book of Heroic Failures. He is also the Founder and President of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain and was the Artistic Director of the First International Nether Wallop Arts festival in 1984, which came about by accident. The next week Stephen met his wife, had three children, became a television critic for fourteen years and hasn't been out of the house since, which is why Britain looks so strange and changed.