Showing results by narrator "Michael Fenton" in All Categories

In celebration of Sir David Jason’s 80th year, A Del of a Life: Lessons I've Learned relives Jason’s extraordinary life and career from more than 50 years in entertainment. From a trainee electrician to one of Britain’s most revered and loved actors, Jason shares heartfelt and hilarious wisdom with listeners on subjects ranging from family to work, resilience to ebullience. Told with his characteristic warmth and wit, Jason shines a wonderful new light on the characters and shows that fans have come to love him for, from Del Boy to Granville, Larkin to Frost.

Brighton, 1957: a sunny seaside resort with a sinister underbelly. This den of villainy is policed by the touchingly innocent Inspector Steine, who naively believes he wiped out all the hoodlums in the Middle Street Massacre six years earlier. Can long-suffering Sergeant Brunswick and keen Constable Twitten persuade him that a criminal mastermind is at large - and that the station's charlady, Mrs Groynes, might bear investigation?

In his first book, David Jason told us about himself from his early years training as an electrician through to making it as one of Britain's actors. This autumn, in a follow-up autobiography, he tells us about the many other lives he has lived - his characters. From Del Boy to Granville, Pop Larkin to Frost, he takes us behind the scenes and under the skins of some of the best loved acts of his career. And in the process he reflects on how those characters changed his life, too.

You know things are going badly when you've been stabbed, hospitalized and arrested for a crime that, not only did you not commit, you actively attempted to prevent. Top that off with a pending appearance in court before a judge whose wife you know rather better than he does, and you start to think that visiting an ancient Irish tomb with a gang of ruthless villains sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. All you have to do is to make sure that you don't end up joining the ancient Irish tomb's ancient Irish inhabitants.

I always think that a genuine friend is like a genuine antique - you'd go a long way to find one and you'd do anything to stop one getting broken. When an Italian gentleman made me an offer I couldn't refuse, stopping my friends from getting broken meant stealing a very valuable antique. 'Somebody else has got my antique and I want it back,' was how he put it. 'Who has it?' I asked. Without a flicker of a smile he replied, 'The Pope'. If you think of the Vatican as a big church where the Pope lives, then think again.

Every antique dealer is a bit of a detective, following clues to find the trophies that pay the rent, but when Lovejoy takes on the job of tracking down a pair of duelling pistols so rare that he's not even sure actually exist, he needs all the instincts of a detective to pick his way through an unsolved crime. Along the way, he becomes convinced that the weapons do exist but that they have fallen into the hands of a vile murderer. Locating the ancient weapons seems like the least of his problems when Lovejoy then finds himself fighting for his life in a duel to the death!

Paperback Hell takes a wry look at well-known genres riding high in the publishing charts and mercilessly lampoons them to hilarious effect. Featuring choice chapters culled from titles that bear a striking resemblance to something you've read before, it's the book show that seems determined to destroy the good name of literature.

Authorised by Mr Lipwig of the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway himself, Mrs Georgina Bradshaw’s invaluable guide to the destinations and diversions of the railway deserves a place in the luggage of any traveller, or indeed armchair traveller, upon the Disc.

Bored and frustrated with her life in 50th-century leisure-ghetto housing estate 'The Hoop', 18-year-old everywoman Halo Jones yearns for the infinite sights and sounds of the universe. Pledging to escape on a fantastic voyage, she sets in motion events unimaginable; a spell on a luxury space-liner, a brush with an interstellar war - Halo Jones faces hardship and adventure in the name of freedom in the limitless cosmos.

Lovejoy discovers how the lure of gold brings out the worst kind of treasure seeker when, broke as usual and earning a crust as an unlikely babysitter, he stumbles across the diaries of a painter that appear to point to the whereabouts of a fabled hoard of Roman gold coins. Lovejoy is tempted to dismiss the whole thing as a hoax, but vile threats and violent intimidation have a way of changing his mind. He sets out to unravel the clues in the diaries, with some particularly nasty characters dogging his every move.

From Hiroshima to Chernobyl, Fukushima to the growing legacy of lethal radioactive waste, humanity's struggle to conquer atomic energy is rife with secrecy, deceit, human error, blatant disregard for life, short-sighted politics and fear. Fallout is an eye-opening odyssey through the first eight decades of this struggle and the radioactive landscapes it has left behind. We are, he finds, forever torn between technological hubris and all-too-human terror about what we have created.

Since it began several years ago Hugo Rifkind's dazzling My Week column has been satirising the high profile and the famous, and basically anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to find themselves at the top of the news agenda that week. The column itself is a fictional diary parodying their movements over seven days in a rarely flattering but always hilarious manner. Rifkind's victims are as diverse and as headline-grabbing as David Cameron, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Edwina Currie, Barack Obama and Pippa Middleton.

In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world’s best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett’s long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the Discworld series.

Lovejoy has heard of more nutters who have claimed to be in possession of the one, true Holy Grail than he has had hot dinners. He's not too impressed with the eccentric clergyman making the latest claim - especially when the good vicar turns out to be one of the finest forgers Lovejoy has ever met. But when the vicar and his lady companion end up dead it becomes clear that someone else is after the old man's artefact. To solve the mystery and protect a precious piece of history, Lovejoy puts his life on the line and acquires a surprising new partner....

When Lovejoy witnesses a car crash that turns out to be a murder - with one of his oldest antique-dealer friends the victim - he sets out on a trail of revenge that leaves him pondering several bewildering questions. Why did his friend buy up a load of junk furniture? What did he want with an old doctor's bag? Why was his friend killed? Who was trying to kill Lovejoy and - most perplexing of all - what the hell is he doing potholing through underground tunnels dodging armed hit men?

It's nearly time for the annual Space Spectacular show, and John and his friends are preparing a battle demonstration for the students’ parents. But when the school's battle droids go on the attack, the students must work together to save the day.

Frank Warren has spent 40 years working with boxing's most colourful and controversial characters. In his long-awaited autobiography, he reflects on the battles he had to win to reach the top and remain there, not least the battle to stay alive after he was shot at point-blank range in an attempted assassination in 1989. In Frank and Fearless, Warren pulls no punches, taking us behind the scenes into a world of blood and sweat, and intense relationships that all too often end in tears.

We join them in September - the start of the farming year - as daughter Megan, a brainy 'plain Jane', sets her sights on Mr Bootle - only to find he's really just interested in birdwatching. December brings 'Goose-Feathering Night' - but Megan's determined to save Gudrun from a plucking. February finds her desperate to get into Oxford University but fearing rejection: could the creepy Mr Jenkins offer a solution?

From rom coms to wrestling and fatherhood to fist fights, Robert Crampton's How to Be a Beta Male is a brilliantly funny and sometimes moving insight into being a modern-day bloke. Robert Crampton has been writing his Beta Male column for The Times since 2001. A much-loved weekly insight into modern masculinity - whatever that might mean - Beta Male strives to unlock the secrets of contemporary relationships in all their frequent glory, occasional frustration and ongoing complexity.

'Chocolate mousse!' says greedy Goose. 'Don't just grab it,' says angry Rabbit. Good manners aren't on the menu at this meal. Duck won't eat his carrots. Moth's eating the cloth, and Sheep would rather sleep than wash the dishes. Thank goodness some of the animals know how to behave!