Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain
The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain club was started by Stephen Pile in order to bring together people of notable ineptitude so that they could share common experiences of failure. The club had a handbook, The Book of Heroic Failures, which became a best-seller.
Description
The description of The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain at the front of the book under The Author stated that Stephen Pile set up the Club 'Three years ago' and over the years had grown in members from 20 to 200. The club was a celebration of people who had a genuine flair for the exact opposite of success.
Application form
The book had a form for readers to fill in and send to an address. The membership form (in the 10th edition of The Book of Heroic Failures) went thus:
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION FORM FOR NTGCGB
Name..........
Address........
Exams failed.........
Main areas of incompetence (give details)..........
Subsidiary areas of incompetence:.........
Cases of sustained chaos occasioned by any of the above:.........
I would like to attend next year's International Festival of incompetence at the Royal Albert Hall.
I am interesting in demonstrating my main area of incompetence at the festival.
- Please place tick or cross in box.
One is unsure as to whether or not the grammatical mistake of 'interesting' instead of 'interested' is deliberate or not.
Demise
Shortly after forming, and after a couple of disastrously successful meetings (reports suggest that some members were even able to find the meeting place) and after the president, Mr Pile, was deposed for showing alarming competence by preventing a disaster involving a soup tureen, the club was quickly forced to close.
According to the book's sequel (The Return of Heroic Failures), after receiving 30,000 applications when The Book of Heroic Failures was published, Pile closed the club, declaring it a "failure as a failure". On other accounts,[1] he lost his membership in the club because the book was such a success.
References
- Pile, Stephen (1979). Book of Heroic Failures: Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. Futura. ISBN 0-7088-1908-7.
- Pile, Stephen (1988). The Return of Heroic Failures. Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-37351-3.