Silly Mid Off (Star of Pembrokeshire Series) [Paperback]

A Bloody Yorker! Hilarious! Buy it now! --Wisdom 'The Cricketor'

A Bloody Yorker! The funniest book I've ever read! Seriously!
--Books Today

A Bloody Yorker! The funniest book I've ever read! Seriously!

Cricket Lovely Pembrokeshire Cricket ... If you've ever wondered if there's more to the 'games people play' than 'bat and ball' then Pembrokeshire's funniest man will hilariously and wickedly strip-off your inhibitions revealing your wildest fantasies ... Silly Mid Off by Dave Ainsworth is a comedy novel set in Pembrokeshire (Wales, UK) and featuring an annual cricket match between two vilage sides, one representing the Welsh speaking North and the other the English speaking South of the County, for the legendary Landsker Cup. It also touches on other aspects of Pembrokeshire life including an amateur-dramatics performance of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Carew Castle ... Silly Mid Off is a complex maze of the intricacies of the human condition and has been professionally criticised for having too many characters, for being too complex. The publishers would claim that, in truth, it's one of those books 'you can't put down' or 'you can't pick up'. Its uniqueness lies in combining fast moving comedy against a backcloth of everyday, including its peaks and depths, life ... A challenging read? Perhaps but then it moves at such a fast rate, depending almost entirely on dialogue, that it's as if you're playing catch-up with the author, and he's trying every 'trick in the book' of human deviousness to try and lose you ... But how can a novel combine comedy and seriousness? We believe by exposing that side of us which tries to hide: which thinks that if we protect our real actions with a camouflague then we'll protect ourselves from ridicule, judgement, exposure ... Or are we reading (sorry about the pun!) too much into Silly Mid Off? After all, there's nothing in the story which mighn't have happened to you or someone you know or heard about ... Should you read it? Only if you want, in the immortal words of Monty Python's Flying Circus, something completely different. But this we believe we can safely promise you, you won't say, using the words of Victor Meldrew: "I don't believe it!" ... Will your world ever be the same after reading Silly Mid Off? Of course not, it'll make you think, you'll never be so easily deceived again!

Silly Mid Off by Dave Ainsworth is a comedy novel set in Pembrokeshire (Wales, UK) featuring a cricket match between two village sides and a performance of 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' at Carew Castle. And here's the rub of the green: a cricket match between two communities from opposite sides of the legendary Landsker Line. One from the 'wrong side of the tracks' in English speaking Little England beyond Wales, one from the north in the Welsh speaking mother land. And so a Shakespeare play at Carew Castle is a sort of neutral zone, or check-point charlie, where life's dramas are played out, as Thomas Hardy would have put it, 'far from the madding crowd'. A novel which reflects the schizophrenia of the human condition: the rational and the irrational, existing alongside each other and interacting, and so as in a Shakespeare play or Fawlty Towers sketch all erupts into tragedy or chaos.

This book is pretty damned funny! Truthfully! I should no, I'm the author!

Dave Ainsworth is a Cockney and worked professionally as a Stand-Up Comedian on the London club circuit for five years alongside Paul Merton, Jo Brand and Jack Dee. With Nick Smith [brother of comedian Arthur Smith] he formed a comedy duo called "The Natterjacks" performing at venues like the Comedy Store and Jongleurs then in 1986 they established the Tattershall Comedy Club in north London. Interviewed in the Western Mail he is quoted: "When Jack Dee was starting out he did his first gig for us. We also worked with people like John Hegley and Jo Brand. She wasn't called by that name in those days, she was called the Sea Monster! It wasn't hard to spot the people who were going to make it. You would see people like Kevin Day, Paul Merton, Arthur Smith close-up and think, these guys are amazing!"

Nowadays he lives at Pembroke, in Pembrokeshire, and teaches at Pennar Junior School in Pembroke Dock, being an honours graduate in drama, and has learnt Welsh. He is married to Sue and they have two sons, William and Tom, who were born in Pembrokeshire.

On Sunday August 5th 2001 there was the premiere, at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven, of a one-act play he has written entitled "Oh! Hello!". As will be appreciated by Carry-On film buffs (!) the title is the catch-phrase of Carry-On stalwart Charles Hawtree, and the play focusses on the actor's final years. Dave Ainsworth, himself, performed the one-man play and interviewed in the local Western Telegraph newspaper is quoted: "Peter Doran [Director of the Torch Theatre] liked the book [Silly Mid Off] and the idea of using local writers in some context. I showed him a play I had written about Charles Hawtrey and he thought it would work well as a one-man act." He has also written a radio play for BBC Radio 4 entitled "Moving Mountains" which is set in Pembrokeshire.