Known to thousands of rugby fans as a knowledgeable, passionate and witty broadcaster, and as an entertaining and popular after-dinner speaker, Phil Steele’s confident demeanour and humorous disposition mask a life-long battle against depression and anxiety heightened by heartbreak and tragedy in his personal life. Nerves of Steele is a remarkable story and reveals the real Phil Steele, a man known only by his very closest friends and family.

All 12 episodes of the anarchic radio sitcom about a man desperate to succeed in a world he doesn't understandPhil's trying to keep his business afloat, and pay the rent. He's trying to get over his ex-wife, who divorced him three years ago. He's trying to be a better person. He's trying - boy, is he trying. He just needs a bit of a break (and a lot of luck) and things will surely start looking up...Series 1 sees him going on a date with El...

Swindon-born William A. Stanier joined Great Western Railway as a fifteen-year-old trainee and began rising swiftly through the ranks. In 1904 he was appointed assistant to the divisional locomotive superintendent in London, and by 1931 he was chief mechanical engineer of the London Midland & Scottish Railway. The LMS locomotives were in a poor state, with some dating back to the 1800s, and Stanier was charged with updating the company with new, more powerful locomotives. His iconic design...

It's more than a little careless to lose a battleship, even in interstellar space. Enter Slippery Jim diGriz, better known as the Stainless Steel Rat, the fastest talking con-man in the galaxy. Jim will need to go undercover to find the missing battleship and make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. A fast paced comical science fiction romp!

After saving the world, diGriz is called on to save the universe. Liberating his two, now teenage, twin' sons from a military boarding school and penitentiary, diGriz sets out to free his wife, who has been arrested by the tax men. But the family is soon fighting an enemy of a different sort, when the humans-only galaxy of the League is invaded by all manner of hideous aliens. The Rat, disguised in the most hideous combination of alien physical features, is sent into the centre of the alie...

James Bolivar “Slippery Jim” diGriz, Special Corps agent, master con man, and interstellar criminal (retired), is living high on the hog on the planet Moolaplenty when a long-lost cousin and a shipful of swine arrive to drain his bank account and send him, and his lovely wife, Angelina, wandering the stars on the wildest journey since Gulliver’s Travels.In this darkly satiric work, Harry Harrison brings his most famous character out of retirement for a grand tour of the ga...

This time the Special Corps has given the Rat a daring assignment—liberate a backward tourist planet from the clutches of an aging dictator. With his lovely but lethal wife Angelina and his two stalwart sons, James and Bolivar, diGriz pits ballots against bullets in the fight for freedom. He's vowed to restore truth, justice, and democracy to the world of Paraiso-Aqui, if he has to lie, cheat, and steal to do it!"The Rat can hold his head high amongst the most elevated superhero co...

Jim and Angelina are on holiday on the paradise planet Lussuoso, where the very, very rich can avail themselves of rejuvenating treatments and become young again. Just when boredom seems about to set in, Jim learns that Angelina has disappeared, seemingly the victim of a religious scam.Evil genius Justin Slakey has a machine that allows him to travel between universes. He uses it to prey on religious believers, tricking them out of their money and then using them as slaves in his c...

Things aren't going well for Slippery Jim diGriz. First there was the robbery of the Mint on Paskönjak that went terribly wrong, and then that little matter of a death penalty, and an extremely unpleasant execution after that. And last but not least, there's the deal Slippery Jim cuts with the authorities, which, on reflection, doesn't look much better than slow death.In exchange for his life, Slippery Jim must retrieve a missing alien artifact from the planet Liokukae—a dumping gr...

DiGriz and Angelina are happily married and expecting the birth of their sons. The planet Cliaand is waging interstellar war, and against the odds, its Grey Men are invading and taking over planet after planet. The Rat is sent to Cliaand to start a one-man guerrilla campaign to put a stop to the plans of the planet's leader, Kraj. He is aided by the Amazons, a force of liberated freedom fighters, and eventually by his wife who arrives to help him win the war and keep him out of the arms of...

Imperetrix Von Kaiser-Czarski is the richest man in the universe, and someone is systematically robbing all of his banks. He decides that the best course of action is to set a thief to catch a thief, and the best thief of them all is one Slippery Jim diGriz. Sceptical at first, Jim is soon won over by the promise of four million credits a day, plus expenses. Jim and Angelina enlist the help of their twin sons, James and Bolivar, and James' computers soon find the common link between all of...

In this prequel to the Stainless Steel Rat, Slippery Jim is a brash 17-year-old who has left his parents' porcuswine farm, planning to embark on a life of crime. The book opens with Jim bungling a bank job so that he can be arrested and sent to prison, where he plans to learn the art of being a master criminal.Deciding that the Bishop should be his mentor, Jim sets about proving himself worthy of the master's attention. He eventually has to flee his home planet of Bit O' Heaven wit...