The Great Switcheroonie

by Alex Shearer

Bill Harris could not be more different from Benny Spinks, the son of a famous footballer and his pop singer wife. Bill knows nothing about football, is never picked for teams and on one occasion scores 6 own goals in a 7-0 defeat. Then, one day, a freak hair-drying incident turns Bill into a Benny Spinks double. Bill is offered look-alike work and so comes to meet Benny. The boys like one another instantly and hatch a plan to swap lives for a day. Confusion follows when both Bill and Benny are kidnapped by rival gangs. However, the boys manage to trick the kidnappers (through a cunning plan involving peanut butter) and each returns to his own life, having learnt something very important about himself.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

About the author

Alex Shearer started his writing career as a scriptwriter and has had great success in that field. His credits include The Two of Us, the 1990s sitcom starring Nicholas Lyndhurst. More recently he has started writing for children. His Wilmot stories have been adapted for TV by Yorkshire television, and his children's novel, The Greatest Store in the World, was screened as a feature length TV film on Christmas Eve 1999 by the BBC. Alex's recent novel 'The Speed of the Dark' was shortlisted for the 2002 Guardian Fiction Prize

Alex Shearer lives with his family in Somerset. He has written more than a dozen books for both adults and children, as well as many successful television series, films, and stage and radio plays. He has had over thirty different jobs, and has never given up trying to play the guitar.