The Wonderful World of Joseph McCrumble
by Mark Booth
2006·280 pages·en
Publisher, ISBN & more
- Publisher
- Mark Booth
- ISBN
- 9781846855054
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by Mark Booth
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The Wonderful World of Joseph McCrumble' is a highly entertaining, but occasionally tragic, insight into the life and times of Dr Joseph McCrumble; an erstwhile yet quietly charismatic scientist-artist who is thrust into the world of celebrity after consulting on a doomed reality-TV programme. Writing in his on-line diary, Dr McCrumble sets out to simply enlighten the public to his valuable work on parasites of both animals and humans, undertaken at the now infamous Cumbernauld Institute of Parasitology (location undisclosed, but definitely nowhere near the Scottish new town of Cumbernauld). Unfortunately, events soon take a turn for the worse, and we begin a tumultuous adventure with more twists and turns than an amateur plumbing convention. On the lighter side, there's kleptomania, kidnapping, nocturnal clinches with naked strangers, unexpected pregnancy and imprisonment. All these escapades involve his family and colleagues, whose gamut of quirks and idiosyncrasies can only be described as 'colourful.' A more life-threatening aspect of the author's life is seen when his diary takes us on precarious journeys to the wildlife parks of East Africa, the blustery highlands of Scotland, and the dark, ominous jungles of Papua New Guinea - a place where Dr McCrumble has experiences that even Joseph Conrad (author: The Heart of Darkness) would balk at. Despite the plethora of tragicomic events that Dr McCrumble has to endure, he maintains his philanthropic ethos and insists that a large slab of the profits of this book, his self-declared magnum opus, be shared between the Matangini Project (a charitable venture supporting community projects in East Africa), and Children In Need. Note: This edition of the diary also contains a 70 page story called 'Five Days in Denver' - an entirely fictional and racy account of scientists behaving badly at a scientific conference.