Thanks to J. B. Priestley for allowing me to quote from his marvellous essay At Thurston's and for writing it in the first place. Thanks to Roy Ullvett, cartoonist extraordinary, whose drawing to celebrate my 500th snooker century appears in this book. Thanks to veteran licensee Billy Green for information on Chesterfield sporting heroes of yesteryear. Thanks to my brother Fred and my sisters for their stories and their photographs. Thanks, also, for old photos, to aunts, uncles, other members of the family, and countless friends. Thanks to my wife, June, whose memory was so often better than mine and who read through the final manuscript. Thanks to Leslie Noble, fellow member of The Eccentric Club, for thinking up the title of this book. And thanks to George Darby who picked up the many tangled threads of my life and produced this coherent story. But thanks most of all to the legions of characters - loveable and appalling, famous and infamous alike - who people this book.