Out of the Centre: Exploring the Meaning of the Word 'Eccentric'
On the drifting meaning of a single word - why the late Lord Bath spent a lifetime declining it, how a national…
Eccentric Club
Mind That Steinway in the Potting Shed
There was a grand piano in the shed. There was a childhood split between Beaconsfield and Beverly Hills, a foxtrot down Sunset…
A Big Bean in a Small Can: Forty Years On
In 1986, a computer technician from Port Talbot climbed into a bath of baked beans and stayed there for a hundred hours.…
The Freedom of the Peculiar: Vote on London's Most Eccentric Borough
We have shortlisted five contenders for London's most eccentric borough — and then decided to let you be the judge. Read the…
Face the World with a Dandy Stance
Before the banjolele there was an indie dance band, a dandy punk group that sang about sherry and ultra-violence, a Britpop terrace…
There Is No Such Thing as Nothing
A boy who watched beetles cross the grass rather than climb the trees grew into a poet, cartoonist, songwriter and campaigner -…
A Prince Among Goons
In the winter of 1973, the future King came through our doors in pursuit of the three silliest men in England —…
Eccentricity in the Blood
In the 1960s, John Blythe recalled growing up in the Eccentric Club founded by his grandfather, Jack Harrison. Half a century later,…
The Del Boy of the Forties
He played every wide boy, tipster, black-marketeer and fast-talking chancer that the British cinema of the rationed years required — and it…
The Wider Circle: London's Eccentric Scene
Beyond our own club, the flame of eccentricity burns bright across the capital and the Home Counties. So here is our field…
How Eccentric is Downing Street?
Long before Downing Street acquired its latest occupant, Britain had entrusted its fortunes to an extraordinary procession of tree-fellers, tricyclists, theologians, dandies,…
The mermaid in a dog collar
From a vicar who dressed as a mermaid, preached with nine cats in church and created what became the modern Harvest Festival,…
They Turned Out to Be My Friends
A personal recollection of representing The Eccentric Club in Devon by our member Colin Shaddick, who won one of The Most Eccentric…
Lives and Portraits of Remarkable Characters
A short history of The Eccentric - its editors, its publishers, and why, after more than fifty years and three series, it…
The Eccentric Charigs
Wes Anderson had The Royal Tenenbaums. The Eccentric Club knew the Charigs — meet a court jeweller dozing under the club clock,…
Nic Wing (1958-2016)
At twenty-one, he stood about in the grounds of Knebworth House while Trevor Howard, blacked up and in a tutu, rode a…
The Great Point of the Tower
Pink pigeons on the lawn, a clavichord under the seat of the Rolls, a horse taking tea in the drawing room, and…
The Peer Who Turned Down a Kingdom
Kipling wrote The Man Who Would Be King - the fable of an Englishman who travels east, is taken for a god…