The Closest Thing to Crazy

'Fabulously readable' STEPHEN FRY'Wildly entertaining' DAILY EXPRESS'Rollicking ... ebullient ... Christmas present problems are instantly solved' MAIL ON SUNDAYNominated for the 2025 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound ResearchDescribed variously as a 'polymath', a 'renaissance man' and 'one of the most colourful characters in the music business', Mike Batt has led an extraordinarily vibrant and challenging life that has been full of both glorious victories and bitter failures. For better or for worse, he is a man who has always lived life on his own terms.Idiosyncratic but mainstream, complicated but compassionate, steadfastly maverick in spirit but avowedly commercial in outlook.He is a man of great contradictions, but even greater talent. After starting out in the music business as a teenager, Batt shot to fame in the early 1970s for his part in the creation of the Wombles pop group.But this success proved to be just the beg