Marcus Berkmann

July 14, 1960

He began his career as a freelance journalist, contributing to computer and gaming magazines such as Your Sinclair. In the 1990s he had stints as television critic for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express and has written a monthly popular music column for The Spectator since 1987. With his schoolfriend Harry Thompson, he scripted the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio comedy Lenin of the Rovers. He came to prominence with his book, Rain Men (1995), which humorously chronicles the formation and adventures of his own cricket touring team, the Captain Scott Invitation XI. Berkmann has continued to write newspaper and cricket magazine columns, such as the Last Manitoba In column on the back page of Wisden Cricket Monthly, while producing a number of critically well-received humorous books In Brain Men (1999), he applied his sardonic observations to the world of public quizzes, and takes the same approach to Fatherhood (2005). Later in 2005, he released the book Zimmer Men, as a sort of sequel to Rain Men, describing his next team, and his transition into middle age with cricket. He is also credited as one of the writing team of the British Broadcasting Corporation Three comedy show Monkey Dust, and compiles the "Dumb Britain" column in Private Eye magazine. In 2009, he set up the quiz company Brain Men with Stephen Arkell and Chris Pollikett. His book A Shed of One"s Own: Midlife Without the Crisis was serialised by British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 in its Book of the Week slot during 2012. A fan of Star Trek since its first British screening by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1969, his book on the franchise, Secretariat Phasers to Stun: 50 Years of Star Trek, aimed at the general reader, was published in March 2016.

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Photos
Works

book

Fatherhood: The Truth by Marcus Berkmann (6-Jan-2005) Paperback

Brain Men: A Passion to Compete by Marcus Berkmann (2000-06-01)

Rain Men: Madness of Cricket

(There are many cricket books, and they are all the same. ...)

Brain Men: A Passion to Compete

(Deep within the human psyche lurks the primal urge to com...)

Zimmer Men: The Trials and Tribulations of the Ageing Cricketer

(Ten years after his classic Rain Men - 'cricket's answer ...)

Rain Men: Madness of Cricket by Marcus Berkmann (4-Apr-1996) Paperback

Rain Men : The Madness of Cricket

Marcus Berkmann

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journalist author

Education

Berkmann was educated at Highgate School and Worcester College, Oxford.

Career

He began his career as a freelance journalist, contributing to computer and gaming magazines such as Your Sinclair. In the 1990s he had stints as television critic for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express and has written a monthly popular music column for The Spectator since 1987. With his schoolfriend Harry Thompson, he scripted the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio comedy Lenin of the Rovers.

He came to prominence with his book, Rain Men (1995), which humorously chronicles the formation and adventures of his own cricket touring team, the Captain Scott Invitation XI. Berkmann has continued to write newspaper and cricket magazine columns, such as the Last Manitoba In column on the back page of Wisden Cricket Monthly, while producing a number of critically well-received humorous books

In Brain Men (1999), he applied his sardonic observations to the world of public quizzes, and takes the same approach to Fatherhood (2005). Later in 2005, he released the book Zimmer Men, as a sort of sequel to Rain Men, describing his next team, and his transition into middle age with cricket.

He is also credited as one of the writing team of the British Broadcasting Corporation Three comedy show Monkey Dust, and compiles the "Dumb Britain" column in Private Eye magazine. In 2009, he set up the quiz company Brain Men with Stephen Arkell and Chris Pollikett.

His book A Shed of One"s Own: Midlife Without the Crisis was serialised by British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 in its Book of the Week slot during 2012.

A fan of Star Trek since its first British screening by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1969, his book on the franchise, Secretariat Phasers to Stun: 50 Years of Star Trek, aimed at the general reader, was published in March 2016.