Mr Hartston's Most Excellent Encyclopaedia of Useless Information

Useless information - we can't get enough of it. Everywhere you look these days there is a new book of trivia, a new web page, a new column in the newspaper, all containing a wealth of fascinatingly useless tidbits. Finding the answers to questions you'd never thought to ask, reading an off-the-wall statistic, or browsing through lists of zany facts is always a refreshing and amusing distraction from the tawdry details of everyday life.

But this is no ordinary list of random facts. Unlike other books of useless information, it is organised alphabetically and full of cross references so that all those hilarious entries can be enjoyed and shared with other like-minded trivia fanatics. A treasure chest of a book for anyone whose curiosity extends beyond the worthy and dull to the eccentric and amusing!

William Hartston read mathematics at Cambridge and is the author of several useless information and trivia books. Since 1998, he has been writing the daily Beachcomber column of surreal humour for the Daily Express.