TV Cream's Toys: Presents You Pestered Your Parents for by Steve Berry
Friday Books : 288pp : ISBN 1905548273 : RRP 9.99 UKP

It's like all your Christmases come at once!
The book of the blog of the toys bit of the site is finally unleashed on the world, in all its paper glory.
TV Cream Toys, as the high-concept pitch has it, is the Amazon wish-list you would've had when you were eight years old, if such a thing had existed. Packed with over 200 colour photos, literally just under sixty thousand words and a whole gallery's worth of specially commissioned illustrations, the book (obligatory Jonathan Ross-baiting subtitle: "Presents You Pestered Your Parents For") will take you back to the days when "browsing" meant putting red pen circles round stuff you wanted in the Grattan's catalogue.
"Amazing," says Harry Hill. "Brilliant, life-affirming and very, very funny..." says Ally Ross out of The Sun (and one of our top movers and shakers of 2005, so that just goes to show bribes really do work).

RELATED LINK: Toys Blog

The Encyclopaedia of Saturday Night Telly by Jack Kibble-White and Steve Williams
Allison & Busby : 382pp : ISBN 0749080310 : RRP 9.99 UKP

What show do top comedy duo Cannon and Ball now refer to as a "monkey on their back"?
Which hugely popular Saturday night entertainment series toyed with the idea of including a regular item based on competitive hay bale rolling?
Which famous comedian claims he invented the word "brill"?

The Encyclopaedia of Saturday Night Telly is your guide through the highlights and lowlights of - well - Saturday night telly. Written by TV Cream's very own Cannon and Ball, Jack Kibble-White and Steve Williams, this top new tome is the first book published dedicated solely to the best telly night of the week. From An Audience With... to You Bet!, via the murky backwaters of Man O Man, Ice Warriors, Sin on Saturday and OTT - it's all here. Look, even The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow gets an entry to itself - you can't argue with that. Plus an actual foreword from the mighty Jeremy Beadle, and the chance to relive the moment Bill Roache appeared on The Steve Wright People Show to publicise his rubbish new board game. The Encyclopaedia of Saturday Night Telly is an essential addition to your library.

TV Cream's Anatomy of Cinema by Phil Norman and Chris Diamond
Friday Books : 240pp : ISBN 190554846X : RRP 12.99 UKP

Which film sees Bill Cosby save the world from vegetarianism on the back of an ostrich?
Which all-round entertainer's Playboy-funded life story stars Bruce Forsyth on stilts?
Which swinging comedy sees Cilla Black push a pram full of magic mushrooms through an exploding power station?

TV Cream's Anatomy of Cinema answers the questions other film guides never thought of asking. It digs through the crust of over-reported classics - Godfathers and Godards, Kubricks and Kanes - and plunges headfirst into the rich and strange history of films perennially overlooked by critics. It's a world of ambitious, multi-coloured social satires and grey, overcast sitcom adaptations; of saucy Soho silliness and post-apocalyptic portentousness; of mega-budget failure and threadbare success. All celluloid life is here. What these films may lack in critical respect, they make up for in sheer fun. There may be no Oscars on the mantelpiece, but there's a roaring fire in the grate and a brace of fruity character actors on the settee. Action!

But don't take our word for it, listen to Jonathan Ross and Paul Merton squaring up to the tome. Get in!

RELATED LINK: Anatomy Blog

TV Cream: The Ultimate Guide to '70s and '80s Pop Culture edited by Graham Kibble-White
Virgin Books ; 256pp : ISBN 0753510804 : RRP 8.99 UKP

"A great subject sadly spoilt by the snide, knowing written style of the author", says Amazon's ben19752 (who also marks a Bergerac DVD and a book about Dynasty by Judith A Moose as one star out of five). Well, hah! Have at you ben19752! Actually there are multiple authors at work here being snide and knowing. The first official TVC spin-off publication, aside from the name above, there's a super group line-up of, erm, talent behind this nifty tome - Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Jack Kibble-White, Phil Norman and Steve Williams in fact.
And within? The biggest, craziest A-Z of nostalgic stuff ever, debated and rated in standard TVC style, from Action comic to the Yellow Pages ad (we didn't think of including Zokko) and all points in between (Ace of Wands, Look-in, Crown Court, Buzzfax... the casual font). It's a winner! NB: "I would of liked to have seen photos included".

RELATED LINK: Extra Bits

The Ultimate Book of British Comics by Graham Kibble-White
Allison & Busby ; 384pp : ISBN 0749082119 : RRP 14.99 UKP

Unless you suffered a ridiculously austere childhood, comic-books will have played a significant part in shaping your early years. For generations, those flimsy weeklies, seemingly printed on paper normally sequestered for school toilets, populated young imaginations with wholesome - and sometimes not so wholesome - entertainment. Some had stirring titles (Victor, Valiant, Champ), some excitable (Wow!, Cor!!, It's Wicked!), others non-threatening (Girl, Bunty, Penny) and a select few just plain crackers (Krazy, Nutty and Oink!), but common to all was a mission to entertain. And once you'd dived into that four-colour world, you were hooked.
They're all lovingly detailed in this fat book which - while perhaps not being as lavishly illustrated as we'd like - is big on fact and anecdote.
So, prepare to reacquaint yourself with a lost world of talking bears, schoolgirl witches, killer sharks, partially crippled footballers, wholly crippled ballerinas, never-say-die paupers and loads of Six Million Dollar Man rip-offs (keep up the good work, IPC!) ...

The A-Z of Cool Computer Games by Jack Railton
Allison & Busby : 320pp : ISBN 0749082062 : RRP 12.99 UKP

Do you remember when TV reporters used to grandly talk about the "silicon-chip age" while boffins warned us that microcomputers would confine the typing pool to the grave of history? Ah yes - the golden age of computers. Back to the day when you passed grotty C15 tapes around the schoolyard and forced shop assistants to load 'Manic Miner' on the computer in your local John Menzies / WH Smiths (delete as applicable). If you have ever experienced a magical computing moment - either at home or in the arcade - then The A-Z of Classic Computer Games is the book for you, and what's more it's written by one of TV Cream's very own (Jack Kibble-White posing in the guide of the pseudonymous Jack Railton). Prepare to download a diverse and highly entertaining plethora of computational nostalgia featuring:
The Computers: Looking back at the systems of yore from Acorn to the ZX Spectrum and assessing which consoles were corkers and which were just plain rubbish.
The Games: From the banal ('Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time') to the anal ('Strip Poker'), all the most important and best-remembered titles lovingly recalled.
The Future: From Making The Most Of Your Micro to the hysteria about virtual reality - how yesterday once thought tomorrow might look.
The Paraphernalia: Joysticks, Tape boxes, manuals, computer characters, colour protection codes, TV ads, magazines and loads of other ancillary ephemera.

Morning Glory: A History of British Breakfast Television by Ian Jones
Kelly Publications ; 256pp : ISBN 190305320X : RRP 16.95 UKP

The first 20 years in the life of toast-scraping, silver top-shimmering telly. A story never before told and hardly read since, its photo-less pages boast interviews with no fewer than three Nicks (Owen, Ross and Witchell, m'lud), one Dyke and no Bough (too busy trying not to remember, he said). Carol Barnes recalls not watching the Channel 4 Daily. Paddy Haycocks reflects on receiving a parcel from Ronnie Kray. John Stapleton winces at the memory of reporting on the Brighton bomb from a public telephone box. Other luminaries from behind the camera insist they were right all along, except when it came to perpetually recommissioning The Big Breakfast, which was always someone else's fault. Blessed with specially drawn caricatures drawn by special man Graham Kibble-White, Morning Glory is never very far from becoming the definitive take on an indefinable milk-filled bowl of TV magic.

RELATED LINK: Extra Chapter